


The Weight of the Sky

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:23:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another post-New Caprica mini-saga. With smut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Titanic

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.   
  
– _Franz Kafka_  
  


* * *

  
  
 _Zarek had always insisted on styling him “Zeus,”and the Galactica his Olympus by logical extension. But if she were to assign an archetype to Adama, Laura mused, she would probably be more inclined to liken him to Atlas. People often thought of Atlas as bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders of stone, but Laura made certain her students learned the earliest and true version of the tale._  
  
Atlas did not hold up the earth, she taught them. He held up the sky. And though the myth, in its evolution, eventually demoted him to a mortal prince, he had been conceived a Titan, son of Iapetus, brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus; he was the leader, in Cronus’ stead, of the charge against Zeus. He was one of those to whom the Olympians were merely highly successful upstarts.   
  
Adama, Laura thought in her flight of fancy, would never need to be petrified by a glance at Medusa to make him fit for his appointed duty. Nor would he be duped by any Herculean trickster into leaving his post. He was a Titan, and time meant a different thing to a Titan; once ordered to support the heavens, he would do so until the next divine catastrophe occurred and he was relieved of his task…   
  
Laura chuckled to herself then, shaking her head. If Adama was Atlas, then who the hell was Zeus in this scenario? For that matter, who the hell did it make  **her**? Maia was Atlas’ daughter, too, and bore a child to Zeus, so where did that fit in? Throw  **that**  in, and it frakked up the entire analogy.   
  
Which did not, of course, make the slightest difference to Laura. Because she simply preferred to think of him as Atlas. He was more than a little unstable, she had to admit to herself; he shot from the hip, he had what she sometimes thought of as a whim of iron. But there was still something about him that spoke to her of patience like eternity, the implacable discipline of mountains, and the weight of the world – no, of the heavens, for they still lacked a world – on his capable shoulders.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
At a fundamental level, the Cylons had simply been too big for the humans on New Caprica to resist. It was not simply a matter of their basestars, their resurrection ships, their sheer numbers in steel and flesh. It was not just a question of the fitness of well-nourished, hale, engineered bodies against those of the exhausted, demoralized, and perpetually famished settlers. Those were only the outward results and symbols of what would ultimately spell defeat, at least in the short term, for the humans. The Cylons’ greatest weapon was one the humans were unable to counter: economy of scale.   
  
The Cylon supply ships were unimaginably large, and capable of producing food to support every semi-organic creature in their fleet; they could feed the humans’ paltry numbers with their table scraps, and in essence they did just that. The mere possibility of having enough food to eat at every meal, every day, had soon made a Cylon sympathizer of many a human settler.   
  
The Cylons did not need to rely on sparse local materials and salvaged ship parts to create shelters; they quickly set up prefabricated building modules sent down from their ships, and began offering to provide more modules to any human who was willing to work with the Cylon forces to “help bring about a return to order and prosperity” for their fellow men. A warm, waterproof home, with a floor that did not turn to mud in the daily rain and walls that did not flap and shudder at the wind’s slightest caprice. Another sizeable contingent of humans was thereby converted to the belief that the Cylons now held only good will towards the remainder of humankind.   
  
Clothing, medical supplies, the promise of assistance in building manufacturing facilities… they could do so much, because they were so many, so amply supplied. With their seemingly bottomless resources, they slowly chipped away at the colony’s resistance until only the most rabid of their detractors remained unmoved. And they smiled, always, patronizing smiles, as they passed their edicts for the common good, and set up the infrastructure that Baltar had neglected to pursue.  
  
“They’re just fattening us up for the slaughter,” Saul Tigh insisted, glad his wife was not in the schoolroom tent with them to hear his blasphemy. Ellen had a new, red skirt, and a sink with running water; she adored the Cylons now.   
  
“No… for the farm,” Kara amended, no animation on her once-lively face. “I don’t care if they haven’t taken anybody yet. That’s all this is about. And I’ll die before I let one of those motherfrakkers frak with me again.”  
  
Laura placed a hand on the younger woman’s slender shoulder, calming, warning. “I think they’ve already got what they wanted from you, Kara.”   
  
A sudden tightening of the lips, a further withdrawal of the spirit, were the only signs Thrace had heard her at all. Worrisome. But perhaps, if this latest round of antibiotics were successful… perhaps Leoben’s revelation of Kara’s motherhood to a hybrid would weigh less heavily on those thin shoulders if she regained some fragment of hope that Anders would survive after all.   
  
“I wish we had Gaeta,” Laura commented idly, not for the first time since they had begun these clandestine meetings. She gave Kara a final squeeze, trying to convey some message of life with even that small gesture, then released her back into her private realm of misery and vengeance. Kara was growing frightening, even to Laura, who knew her value as a weapon. “It’s too dangerous, but still.”  
  
“I just wish we were sure we had Tyrol,” Tigh responded. “They’ve finished the foundation for the tool shop. I don’t know –“  
  
“We can’t know. We just have to trust that he won’t forget what – his background with the Cylons. Cally’s no fan either. They’ll be back. Don’t start, Saul. Next item?”  
  
“Me,” Kara intoned, still staring at the tent wall as if it held some special meaning for her. “We still have no firm fix on their weapons on the ground, but there’s no evidence of permanent installments so far. None of the big stuff, no planetary defense. They must have enough fuel to keep their basestars operational more or less indefinitely, though. They’re still up there, and so is at least one resurrection ship. Whatever their plan is, they don’t seem interested in staying here permanently. Except for the shop and the plant, no built structures, and –“  
  
“ _Ssst. Toaster!_ ” Came a whispered warning from just outside the back flap of the tent. Kat, doing a good job as lookout. The three conspirators fell silent, listening for the metallic creak and clank as the sentry marched by. Keeping the peace. Laura raised her eyebrows and sighed silently. Kara glanced at her watch, rolled her eyes, and made a “get it over with” motion with her hands.   
  
“Why are you interested in the curriculum, anyway, Mr. Tigh? Of course we always welcome civic involvement, but you don’t actually have any children in the school.” Laura was tapping her fingers impatiently on her folded arms, now, always tired of their subterfuge before it even began.   
  
“If you’re going to have the students learning about the history of the twelve colonies, you’re going to need input about just what to include. We are walking a fine line, here, Ms. Roslin, and this is no time to frak with the peace by trying to train up little revolutionaries.” Tigh held up a hand for a moment for silence; none of them had heard the signature whirring noise that meant the Cylon had started moving again.  
  
“It wasn’t a revolutionary speech, Tigh, I just told them not to frak with their teacher or she’d put them out the airlock just like she used to do with Cylons.” Kara smirked ruefully. Even as reluctant an actor as she had to enjoy some of her lines.  
  
“Yes, Ms. Thrace, and as I mentioned at the time, it was highly inappropriate even for you. Mr. Tigh, I’ve already asked Ms. Thrace not to volunteer her time at the school unless she can control her language.” Laura said sternly, belying the light of amusement in her eyes. “I don’t care if she’s talking about a Cylon or a human, we are trying to teach the children to demonstrate respect here.”  
  
 _Whirrrrr. Creak, clank, creak, clank…_  
  
“Well, perhaps a little time in the brig would – frak it, it’s gone, I’m done.”  
  
“This performance brought to you by the New Caprica Insurgency Players! Sponsored by –“  
  
“Shhh!” But Laura was hard put not to laugh herself, partly out of relief at hearing Kara make a joke about something, anything, for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “I think it’s really time we went ahead and adjourned for the night.”  
  
They would be up late, however. They still had their real meeting to attend, which would include both Gaeta and Tyrol, and which would not take place anywhere near such an obviously bugged location as the school tent. Unfortunately, there would not be much more to discuss at the real meeting than there had been at the sham one. But at least, they reasoned, the Cylons wouldn’t know about it.   
  
Laura returned to her tent alone after that second meeting, hastily changed into warm sweatpants and a fresh, dark green long-sleeved pullover she had recently bartered a skirt to obtain, and then pulled her lumpy New Caprican cardigan back on. Curling under the blankets once the lights were out, hoping that the wind would not rise again tonight, she recalled her earlier musings on the theme of Atlas, and smiled for a moment before the inevitable happened and the tears began to fall. It had been nearly a month, now, since the Cylons had come to this purgatory and turned it into her own personal vision of hell. Nearly a month, since she could look up in the sky and at least feel secure in the knowledge that he was up on the ship, helping to hold the heavens up.   
  
She fell asleep crying and chanting to herself the same incantation she had fallen asleep to every night since the Cylons had landed; every night she was capable of sleeping, at least. There wasn't much to it:  _Please come back, please come back, please come back…”_


	2. Martial

In enterprise of martial kind,  
When there was any fighting,  
He led his regiment from behind  
(He found it less exciting).  
  
\-- Sir William Schwenk Gilbert,  _The Gondoliers_  
  


* * *

  
  
“Well, really, I… ha hah, I can only say to that, that  _overlord_  is… well, it’s just too strong a word, isn’t it?” Baltar punctuated his response by running his hand swiftly down his arm, as if shooing away a persistent insect. Then his head tipped over to the side, and his eyes shut suddenly as he giggled. “I, ah… ahhhhh.  _You can’t just_ … Next question? Yes, Mister… you there.”  
  
This rare public appearance by the President was only a stunt, Laura knew. A distraction, orchestrated by the Cylons. Baltar never had anything to say, and she was always amazed anew when the reporters continued to act as though he did. Lately, his odd mannerisms had worsened again, and she suspected he was increasingly under the sway of whatever invisible demon dogged his steps. It was a woman, she knew that much. And she often wondered if it was really just some madness of his own, or some part of the Cylon master plan?   
  
Or did the Cylons even have a master plan any more? While Baltar entertained the masses on the conquerors’ behalf with his antics and idiocy, one of the Leobens behind him was staring daggers at the Sharon and Six at the back of the crowd. There had been more and more of this open animosity of late, along with more and more armed Centurions on the streets.   
  
“President Baltar, can you tell us the purpose of the new structure the Cylons have been building just south of the city?”  
  
“Can I… yes! Oh, yes!” Baltar gave a little start and then paused, seeming to look a little frantically for his train of thought. “The new structure. Yes. I mean, no, I can’t tell you. Because I don’t actually know. Yet.” He bit his upper lip, and then smiled rather sheepishly.   
  
“Sir, it appears to be heavily fortified. Does it have anything to do with the increased presence of Centurions on patrol?” The reporter was pushing his luck with the follow-up question, but could obviously see that Baltar was not focused enough to complain. The answer, however, was surprisingly lucid when it came; perhaps Baltar’s companion was not so constant, after all, and had taken a temporary leave of absence just then.   
  
“If that were the case, perhaps it would be best not to ask too many questions about it. However, I can tell you what I know at this time, which is simply that the new building will be completed very soon, and the Cylon leaders assure me it is yet another step that will ultimately benefit both Cylons and mankind. Now, I believe our time is up. Thank you all very much, have a pleasant day.” Ignoring the rest of the reporters’ calls, Baltar stepped off the podium and disappeared back into the grounded Colonial One, which still served him as office.   
  
Laura made her way back to the school tent, staying as close to the middle of the crowd as she could through paranoid habit. As far away from the Centurions as possible; like all those of a certain age, she could never quite shake the images of her childhood, the terror inspired by the cold metal carapaces of the Cylon armies. These might do construction work, might make the rounds of the city like policemen on a beat, might now be downplayed as semi-sentient “pets,” but one need only look at them to know they were still just killing machines; she suspected them always of being, at some level, eager to return to displaying their true natures.   
  
Within a week of Baltar’s appearance, the mysterious building south of the tent city was in fact completed, as far as any of the colonists could tell. Felix had arrived at the rendezvous with his compatriots and described the outside of the facility, to which he had been as close as any human had.   
  
“Whatever it is, it seems built to be impregnable, and it seems capable of housing or storing a lot of whatever they plan to keep there.”  
  
“Why storage or housing? Couldn’t it be a factory of some kind?” Laura asked, staring down at Gaeta’s rough sketch of the building, lit by a feeble flashlight, marking the damp estuary sand before her feet.   
  
“We considered that, but if it is complete, it can’t be anything that requires much venting. There are air conditioning ducts, the other usual types of mechanicals you might see on any building with a lot of people in it, but no smokestacks, no flare valves, no heavy piping in or out. Manufacturing takes heat, and the heat has to have some way to get out. It doesn’t seem like another production facility.” Gaeta was pointing, with one toe, at the absence of evidence of manufacturing in his drawing. “It’s built to take a lot of attack. They started with the prefab units, but now it’s basically armor-plated around the outside. It’s a bunker.”  
  
“No…” Laura was staring at the sketch, calling up the picture of the actual building, seen only at a distance, in her mind.   
  
“It’s a hospital,” Kara said quietly; it was the first thing she had said since arriving.   
  
One by one, each of them nodded in silent assent as the truth reared its loathsome head, a monster in their midst.   
  
“Round robin,” Laura suggested solemnly, pointing first at the former Colonel to her right.   
  
“Pass. Give me a minute.” Tigh looked over at Kara, but quickly looked away.   
  
“Felix?”   
  
“Next they’re going to start filling it up. Why else would they build it? So we try to anticipate  _how_  they plan to do it. If it’s by persuasion, maybe word of mouth about what Kara saw on Caprica would help counter that, although of course it couldn’t come from her directly. You can get the rumor going, though. We sort of have that network in place already, thanks to the lovely Mrs. Tyrol.” They all smiled grimly, and Tyrol chuckled, at just how effective once-Specialist Cally had turned out to be at the subversive’s art of indirect persuasion and dissuasion. “And, uh, if it’s by force, we would want to find out when. I guess. Whether they were going to be overt about it… I don’t know. Next.”  
  
“Galen?”  
  
“If it’s as shielded as Gaeta thinks, there isn’t much chance of blowing it up without getting right inside it. Sounds like only females who can get pregnant will be getting in, and we don’t know what they’ll be treated like once they’re in – Cap, are you okay?“   
  
Laura stepped forward to support Kara, who had suddenly made a muffled gagging sound and spun away from the small group. Gagging became retching, and Laura gently pulled the long flaxen strands away from the struggling woman’s face, placed a firm hand under her forehead, and spoke quiet nonsense to soothe her until the spell had passed.   
  
“Frak me,” Kara muttered, with none of her customary vitality. Laura stepped back, leaving her alone to regain her composure. She spit several times and passed the back of one arm across her mouth, cursing under her breath and finally turning back to those assembled with a look of supreme disgust on her tense, tired face. “I’ll blow it up. You give me the fireworks and I’ll shoot that frakker so high in the air it’ll be wearing its frakking ass for elbows by the time it lands.”  
  
A moment of silence passed, in which none of them met one another’s eyes. It was finally broken by Tigh, who bravely faced Kara down. “Wearing its ass for elbows, Thrace? What the frak are you even thinking?” A smile snuck through his deadpan defenses, then a snicker not quite befitting a man of his years, and then he was joined by Tyrol, who pantomimed an attempted demonstration of the colorful expression on an uncooperative Gaeta.   
  
Kara met Laura’s eyes and they shared a private smile, before she commented wryly to all assembled that she probably should have just passed in the round robin, because her turn was clearly not helpful.   
  
“I suppose it’s my turn, then. Gentlemen!”  
  
The three unlikely jokers all settled down instantly at the teacher-voice, and Laura was able to proceed in short order. “I think bombing it would be inadvisable at this time. We don’t even know if it’s possible to do it, even if we do get someone on the inside, for one thing. And all the evidence suggests they have the resources to just build another one of whatever it is. Or just take the women up to one of their ships, for that matter. We don’t want to force that issue by acting without enough facts. So fact-finding, that needs to be everyone’s responsibility this time. Especially Felix.” She looked around at the ragged bunch of insurgents, with what was starting to be a familiar mix of worry and pride. “Now, just one more order of business. Communication… has anyone come up with anything?”  
  
They all shook their heads sadly, looking deflated, and Laura felt her own energy seep away into the cold as well. The Cylons had promptly removed all the known communication devices from the grounded ships, and had made it clear they were monitoring on all frequencies “to ensure the safety of the general population of New Caprica from those who would seek to sow dissent and disorder.” One of the recurrent topics the dissenters raised between themselves was how the Adamas could effect a rescue if there were no way to alert the public that a rescue was imminent. It took a lot of time to move forty thousand people, and New Caprica City was home to almost that many. What if their rescuers arrived, only to be trampled to death in the stampede and crossfire that would undoubtedly ensue?   
  
Even their own face-to-face communication was becoming too risky to sustain in its current form. With the increased patrols and the stepped-up vigilance by the Cylons on the ground, the would-be rebels knew they could no longer meet in such a large group, and would have to begin relying solely on coded notes, occasional one-on-one meetings that could be made to seem accidental, and other less regular means of conveying information to one another. They were communicating less, not more.   
  
Yet, surely, Admiral and Commander Adama had both considered all this. They must have. And despite all of it, they would find a way. It was the one hope that sustained the people who knew them best. Even as those people told themselves not to rely on outside assistance, to find their own way clear of the Cylons by any means necessary, the deep unspoken faith in Bill and Lee was what got each of them through each dismal day. And even if none of them said it – because it was too fragile and dearly held a hope to risk by voicing it – each of them saw the bleak world of New Caprica against the constant vision of the miraculous rescue that the Gods, and their representatives the Adama men, must have in store.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
Laura pulled off first one ill-fitting boot, then the other, sighing in relief as she stretched her feet out and wiggled her toes freely for the first time all day. Even lacing the heavy footwear as carefully as she could only helped so much. Still, she reasoned, at least she wasn’t stuck with her pumps anymore. The first trip down the marketplace in spiked heels had been a cause for much amusement, as the delicate points sliced straight down into the muddy soil with each step. When she found herself stranded, shoeless, as the mud took a firmer hold and decided to retain her heels, she vowed not to leave the market without a better alternative. The boots, formerly part of a military uniform, were the only thing she could find in her size.   
  
She had actually dreamed of a favorite shoe store on Caprica a few nights ago. In her vivid recreation of the store, the racks of shoes went on and on until the vanishing point, and she wandered between them marveling at the colors, the styles, how soft the plush carpet felt on her feet which were, curiously, bare. She woke up laughing at herself, but more than merely nostalgic. Silly though she might insist to herself it was, the dream left her with an ache for what that store represented: having leisure, having new things to buy, some of which you did not even need, being able to get exactly what you wanted  _and more_ , being clean. One took nothing for granted, anymore.   
  
Laura felt that she had taken all the wrong things for granted, after the Cylons attacked and she inherited Richard’s office. She had relished each item of clean or fairly new clothing, because she had so few items of clothing; she had savored those sips of Ambrosia with the bittersweet knowledge that when the Ambrosia was all gone, it would be gone forever. She waxed melancholy over all the books lost, all the people lost, because those were the things she thought she would have spent more time and effort on, had she known in advance she was going to lose them. But she had taken the people in her “new” life for granted, almost without thinking about it. One tends to do so, with people one comes to know well. Daily tedium makes a mockery of our best intentions in these matters, and it was not until she no longer had the convenience of speaking to, just as an example, the Admiral, any time she liked, that she realized how accustomed she had grown to… the convenience of being able to speak with him.   
  
She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the automatic self-deception, the reflexive pulling-back from uncomfortable truths. She had started out rather disliking then-Commander Adama, finding him abrasive, hidebound, hawkish. But as soon as he showed up on Kobol – well, as soon as she realized he was not, in fact, going to gun them all down – she had recognized a change. Not necessarily in him or in her, but in their understanding of one another. A tolerance that hadn’t been there before, and that had paved the way for appreciation. And then admiration. And finally, affection, although it was a strange sort of sideways affection that neither could really show. Except that once – but the knowledge of impending death makes its own protocol.   
  
Only… she hadn’t died. She had been pared down to her essence, to her own truths, and then been miraculously granted the opportunity to rebuild herself on those bones. And that newer version of herself had begun with affection for Bill, and worked from there. By the time they reached the crucial decision that had landed the settlers here, there had been just a hint of something else. It was still inconvenient, of course. Nothing about Bill had ever been simply convenient, and she doubted it ever would. If there were an “ever.”   
  
 _Words beginning with “A,”_  Laura thought, rubbing her aching feet under the always necessary puddling of blankets and sweaters.  _Adama, Atlas. Animosity. Appreciation, admiration, affection…_    
  
The next logical word in the sequence had just popped into her mind when her train of thought was derailed by a metallic squeak and whir from beyond the tent flap. And then the slow, metronomic creak, clank, creak, clank of the Centurion moving along.   
  
Laura was relieved they had made the decision not to meet any more, and hearing the Cylon stop deliberately outside her tent – for the Centurions did nothing by accident, they couldn’t – only heightened that relief. Rising reluctantly from her warm cocoon of blankets, she peeked outside to see that the Cylon had stopped at the “crosswalk” of the two nearest muddy paths, where another had joined it. They looked about but did not continue patrolling; they seemed to be on sentry duty. Glancing quickly down the walk in the other direction, Laura saw another two sentries posted just a few tents away. And another two, past those two. The dim light of the tent compound reflected off their shells and showed them up clearly in the night, almost as if they were lit by some malevolent spark of their own. Which they were, Laura realized; there were enough of them, and it was dark enough this moonless night, that their coursing red “eyes” were actually casting a glow over the road.   
  
Shuddering, she retreated back into her tent to consider this newest development. No longer just one sentry and one patrolling Centurion per street, but this heavy deployment. The marketplace all but dismantled, the union disbanded, and information controlled strictly by the Cylon overlords, and now this. Well, yes, it was martial law. It always had been. But Laura had to wonder exactly what it was the Cylons wanted. She thought back to that odd remark one of the Brother Cavil models had made, so long ago in the Galactica’s brig. That the Cylons now wanted to embrace being machines, instead of trying to take the same path as humanity. So what did the Cylons want the humans for, why didn’t they just kill them?   
  
If there was one thing Laura had always hated about politics, it was the prevalence of the hidden agenda. Even after she had been forced by circumstances to keep one of her own, she still preferred the straightforward approach and always would. The Cylons were beating around the bush, and that more than anything set her on edge. Perhaps not more than anything; at that moment it was actually fear of what the ranks of Centurions outside had been sent to do, that had her heart pounding so hard it hurt.  
  
They never did find out what the mysterious building was really for. Because just as the Centurions started forward, moving in eerie unison, to approach the tents and begin the next stage of the Cylons' plan, the sky fell in.


	3. Panic

Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again. --  _Ralph Waldo Emerson_  
  


* * *

  
  
  
When all hell breaks loose, the mob tends to panic; panic is most properly defined as a group phenomenon, because Pan was the god of the herds, among other things. Like sheep, then, the humans ran bleating into the streets when they heard the clash of battle, their only thought to get away.   
  
Laura Roslin, who was not inclined to behave like a sheep, instead snuck out the back of her tent and began plucking the children she recognized out of the crowd with her hands, her voice, and her sheer determination. They soon formed a tight little knot around her, and stood staring in shock at the riotous motion they had so recently been part of. Some of them were alone, some with parents, but there would be no finding families in the mob; at least, safely to one side of the street, the children were no longer in danger of being trampled.   
  
While accomplishing all this, Laura also took a good look at what was happening and realized, unlike the members of the herd, that they were all running in the wrong direction. They were running away from the source of the loudest noise; but that noise was generated by a complement of huge, black-painted ships that had landed in strategic locations around the city and marketplace. Not Cylon ships, not raiders. Colonials.   
  
 _It’s suicide,_  she thought, but couldn’t help but admire the soldiers who had begun braving the Cylon bullets to dart into the swelling crowd and turn them around, nipping at their heels until they understood that this was the rescue, that the ships to freedom lay in the opposite direction.   
  
She called one last child to her side, a sensible young girl who thought to drag her parents behind her. Maya ran up just then as well, out of breath, crying with relief at finding Laura, carrying a screaming Isis with her. Moving slowly and cautiously at first, wary of the Centurions who had all suddenly moved toward the rescue ships as if at some silent signal, Laura led her little line of charges as if they were marching down a hallway to the cafeteria, with Maya at the end of the line to marshal any stragglers. They picked up more as they went along, as people saw who was leading the group and made way for her, then fell in behind. By the time she had broken into a jog, within sight of the nearest ship’s lowered cargo ramp, the Colonial soldiers had spotted her as well. Laying heavy covering fire against the encroaching Centurions, some of whom also seemed bent on reaching the former President, the human crew members hustled her into the already overloaded ship, along with the children and other followers.   
  
Laura’s last sight of New Caprica before the ramp retracted and the door closed was a Colonial fighter, whose name she would always regret not knowing, being gunned into the ground by two Cylon Centurions. Then the seal hissed shut, the ship shuddered as it hauled itself away from the planet’s pull, and within minutes they all pitched and yawed internally as the FTL drive kicked in, snapping them like a stone from a slingshot, away from the most recent home of humanity.  
  


* * * * *

  
  
Three harrowing jumps later, the subtle hum of the engines shifted down a key, and some of the tension vibrating through the crowd in the cargo bay relaxed as well. A babble of conversation, with occasional peals of laughter, began to be heard over the sounds of fear, as they all realized they were free for the moment, safe for the moment, headed towards something that had to be better than Cylon-controlled New Caprica. Leaving Maya in nominal charge of the gaggle of children, Laura stood and looked around, trying to spot a clear path through the horde.   
  
“Madame President,” a voice called, and she turned automatically toward the young deck officer who was spearheading the distribution of water rations and medical supplies among the refugees.   
  
“I’m not – “she stopped herself, shrugging. “I’m not… able to make it over to you. Unless – oh, thank you.” This last was directed toward the huddle of people most directly in the way, who had edged aside to make a walkway for her. The movement spread as she edged forward, parting the crowd until she was standing next to the young officer. Another one she didn’t recognize, probably because she had been most familiar with the pilots, and the CIC staff, and had not had as much opportunity to meet the thousands of other crew members on Galactica or Pegasus. Not, of course, that many thousands had been left up on those two ships, or the other 17 still in the fleet, by the time the Cylons had found New Caprica.   
  
Another officer joined the first just as she arrived; because he was tall enough, he had stepped right over legs, children, anything else in the way.   
  
“Major Agathon, it’s good to see you again. And congratulations on your promotion.”  
  
“Thank you, Madame President. Do your people have everything they need for now? We’d appreciate your input on the bridge, if you can leave them.”  
  
“They’re fine, Major. But I’m not the –“  
  
“Ma’am, time is of the essence. We need to get the transports docked and the civilians onto the bigger ships before we go any further, but we still need some help with our head count, and with some other questions that have come up. If you would?” Helo’s small, polite smile left no room for argument, and Laura gave Maya a reassuring nod and wave before she followed him out of the cramped hold, and into the relative peace of the ship’s corridor.   
  
What she saw here confirmed her initial assessment, that this was no military ship. Crew members in civilian clothes passed quickly by, nodding or giving a small wave, but not saluting the officer. The upkeep, too, was patchy, shabby, nonstandard. The military might not keep its ships pretty, but it did keep them clean and tidy. Laura shuddered as she saw something scuttle away from the light when Helo opened a causeway hatch and ushered her into the dark space. On the other end of the short tunnel, the hatch stuck, and Helo had to put all his weight on the handle to get it to turn. He briefed her as they hurried on their way, but Laura missed a great deal of what he said; she was too overwhelmed, and too filled with concern over her own set of nagging questions.   
  
“We knew we could get the landing ships, the fuel, most of the other supplies, assuming the Cylons had left the other colonies when they abandoned Caprica. We even picked up a few hundred survivors, resistance fighters and outliers mostly, by the time we had swept all twelve. Then it was just a matter of figuring out how to make the carbon cladding work on a ship that big; covering the whole thing with new plating would take too long, probably weigh too much. And we were trying to strip the ships, not weigh them down. Then the Admiral suggested we try just painting the frakking things. Oh, sorry, ma’am.”  
  
“That’s quite all right,” Laura said, her mouth quirking with amusement. “So you… painted them? With carbon?”  
  
“Not painted exactly, it ended up being more complicated than that, a little more like electroplating. But essentially, yes.”  
  
“Like the Blackbird. I see.”  
  
“We knew some would burn off on re-entry, but we weren’t sure how much. We just knew it was the only way to get in and land without giving them enough advance warning to put a serious guard up.”  
  
“So you just walked right in the front door.”   
  
Helo grinned, nodding his head. “Sometimes that’s the only way in, Madame President.”  
  
He opened the hatch to the tiny bridge, where a few other uniformed officers were deep in consultation with a watch-capped, muscle-shirted Sagittaron named Joshua. Laura never did learn his last name, this freighter captain, but he greeted her with a startling courtliness, offering her a seat and some water in a relatively clean glass.   
  
She accepted both graciously, but again tried to demur about the title.   
  
“About that, Ma’am,” Helo said reluctantly, “it’s just that it’s what the crowds on all the ships are calling you, evidently. Once we’d relayed the message that you were on board, we’ve been getting nothing but communications asking how President Roslin is doing, what President Roslin has in mind, wanting us to let President Roslin know she has their support…”  
  
“The will of the people,” the captain said quietly, looking shyly down at his enormous boots.   
  
“So say we all,” muttered one of the other officers, seeming instantly a little sheepish at his automatic response.  
  
She looked from one to the other, calculating, and then shrugged. “We’ll table it. Major, what so urgently required my attention here?”  
  
“Actually, ma’am, it’s just a logistical problem. This ship is slated to go to the Pegasus to unload its civilians; there are too many here to house on Galactica. Too many for this ship, really. We were worried there for a minute that we wouldn’t make it out of upper atmo, right Josh?”   
  
The captain said nothing, just grinned widely and patted the console before him fondly as Helo continued.   
  
“We’re in line to unload next, but it will take some time once the entire group starts moving, to get them through the dock and settled. If you’re to go to Galactica before we make the next jump series, we’ll need to take a shuttle over now. But we couldn’t move your whole group out, as Galactica’s already full to capacity.”  
  
“I don’t mean to ruin anyone’s plans, but why, exactly, is it necessary for me to go to Galactica when all the others are being moved to Pegasus?” She was being disingenuous, and knew it, but something about their collective presumption galled her. Madame President, was it again? What about a year ago? She had  _told_  them so, they hadn’t listened, why should she take up the reins again now?  
  
Because it was her nature, of course. And so she sighed heavily, told Helo to disregard the last question, and sent a message to Maya explaining her sudden departure. Then she asked the question she would have asked had she still been President.   
  
“Major, what is the preliminary head count?”  
  
“It’s… about twenty-seven thousand, ma’am. All twelve transports have reported in.”  
  
Laura nodded. She could feel the weight of the number, the sum of her responsibility, already settling on her shoulders. Odd, that the smaller number should weigh so much more heavily. She pushed her hair back from her face, squared her burdened shoulders against the challenges ahead, and turned toward Helo. She was as ready as she would ever be.   
  
“Get me to Galactica.”  
  


* * * * *

  
  
Major Agathon had escorted her straight to CIC, where he left her standing by the door and immediately resumed his own duties.  
  
Thus it was that she had one flicker of rest among all the flashing chaos, a tiny bubble of quiet solitude in which to catch her breath. And it was there, in that place from which she gazed out with almost otherwordly serenity, that Adama first saw her again.   
  
A ghost of a smile reached his eyes, and she responded in kind, before an aide slipped a clipboard in front of him and the spell of a moment was broken. He returned his attention to the navigation chart, on which another officer seemed to be sketching out a plan. To Laura’s surprise, she realized the other officer was Felix Gaeta, actually still in mufti and looking the worse for wear; he had a heavy bandage taped to one side of his neck, and two of his fingers on one hand were taped together.   
  
Who else had made it, she wondered, and as if he had read her mind, Adama waved her over at that moment and began to discuss their key personnel.   
  
“We have Kara, she was on one of the first Raptors that pulled in here. She’s in the sickbay with Anders, though. Says she won’t leave him. A few other pilots, some tactical people made it up.” Sliding a sheet of paper towards her across the table, he let her read it as he continued. “Until we can come up with a complete roster, we’re concentrating on this list. We’ve posted it and made announcements on all the ships, asking people to come forward. We’ve already heard from Tyrol, he’s on the Pegasus getting the deck crew organized. His family’s there with him.”  
  
Laura raked her eyes down the list, seeing how many names had yet to be crossed off as found. “Saul?”  
  
“Nothing yet. What can you tell us about where he would have been? The landing parties said there were some changes in the layout around the city, and Mister Gaeta has already made some notes.” Adama flicked through a stack of documents and extracted a rough map of New Caprica City. Laura looked down, rounding the lighted console table to the Admiral’s side, to get a closer view of the map; it already bore several quick sketches with comments in Gaeta’s clear, crisp hand.   
  
“If you have a pencil or something, I can – thanks.” She took the offered pencil and tapped the eraser end thoughtfully against pursed lips before starting to mark in changes on the map. Her glasses slipped down her nose, and she pushed them back into place without thinking about it, already absorbed in her task.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Adama said softly, closer to her ear than she was expecting. “Don’t break that one, we’re running a little low.”  
  
Her hand hesitated for just a moment before confidently continuing the sketch. “I’ll keep that in mind, Admiral. Felix got nearly everything, but I can add one or two buildings and place a few people. Saul and Ellen had moved out here, in the first row of the prefabs on the east side. I’ve added this fourth row right here, in that same complex. Some of the students’ families have moved into these new units just in the past few days. That would mean maybe another two hundred, out of the tents? All told, I think there were close to three thousand who had moved out to the prefabs, as of last week or so.”   
  
“That sounds about right,” agreed Gaeta. “And each new phase of development has pushed further away from the original city footprint. Most of them never would have made it to the ships in time from out there.”  
  
“Divide and conquer?” Adama asked wryly.  
  
“They’re traditionalists,” replied Laura, “but it doesn’t mean they aren’t damned effective. Their flaw is in always thinking we’re through surprising them.”  
  
“Well said, Madame President.”  
  
Laura glanced to her side, catching the Admiral’s eyes.  _Oh… those would be Bill’s eyes, just now._  She had somehow forgotten how  _blue_  they were. She was standing shoulder to shoulder with him, so close she could smell him – a not unpleasant musky blend of yesterday’s aftershave, today’s exhaustion, the well-worn wool and leather of his uniform, and something undefinable that was just his own.  _So blue. And so sad, always so sad._  And standing too close for this much eye contact to be quite appropriate.   
  
“Thank you, Admiral.” Laura looked pointedly back down at the backlit nav screen, both hands firmly gripping the table’s edge. “Can someone fill me in on the rest of your plan? And I suppose while we’re still sorting out leadership, I’m going to need an aide. I see you’ve already co-opted Mister Gaeta.”  
  
“You have to get up pretty early to get ahead of the Old Man,” Adama deadpanned.  
  
“It’s clear we won’t be holding classes any time soon, so with your permission, Admiral, I’ll bring Maya over to the Galactica to assist me. She’s been working with the five-to-eight-year-olds, so she should find being the interim President’s interim assistant a piece of cake by comparison.”  
  
“She bringing her family with her?”  
  
She couldn’t read his expression, but she was willing to stand her ground, either way. She had, inevitably, grown fond of Isis; she would be just as glad for the baby’s presence as for Maya’s. “Yes, she will be.”  
  
Her unequivocal tone told him all he needed to know. “After the last jump in this series, we’ll send a shuttle.”  
  
“We’re going to need to assign a team to get children back with their families as soon as possible, and to take care of the children who are here without their families. If you don’t already have one, we’ll need people working on a new census. I’ll work on a streamlined set of offices and responsibilities, but I’ll need to see who we have available to fill them. And first I’ll get you a short list of the most immediate concerns.” Pushing off the table, she folded her arms across her chest, deep in thought. “I’ll need an office, some supplies. Paper. Pencils.” She smiled ruefully at Adama. “And can you find me a, um… dry-erase board? It doesn’t have to be very big.”


	4. Panacea

My great panacea for making society at once better and more enjoyable would be to cultivate greater sincerity. -- _Frances Power Cobbe_  
  


* * *

  
  
She didn’t know how long she had been awake. Around forty-two hours, she thought. Long enough for actual drowsiness to have been replaced first by extreme irritability, next by a second wind, and now by a slightly euphoric surrealness. She had sent her hastily assembled team back to their quarters to sleep, and she eyed the soft leather of the Admiral’s couch with something equivalent to ravenous hunger; but she knew that if she sat down, she would sleep, and she had agreed to meet him here to go over the most urgent items of business facing them.  
  
So, sitting was out. Instead, she paced the floor between the couch and the desk, past the head,  _ignore the opening onto the room with the bed_ , back past the chairs, the table, the couch again. _Ignore the couch, can’t sit down._  Exploring the sundry accoutrements, knick-knacks, objets d’art. She had always wondered what was actually in the carved wooden box sitting on the trunk that served as a coffee table. For the first time, she gave in to curiosity and opened the lid.  
  
Rocks. Why would he have…? Ah. Neat little adhesive labels stuck to each, one from each colony. Less tidy, handwritten labels taped onto a thirteenth, from Kobol, and a fourteenth, from New Caprica. Underneath the rocks, there was a folded piece of paper. Without thinking about the potential breach of privacy, Laura unfolded it and saw a list of names, callsigns and nicknames actually, in columns covering one side of the paper. She only recognized the more recent of them, one of which had been crossed out firmly. Under the strikes, she could just read “Apollo;” his father must have added him to the list when he was thought to be gone, and then reclaimed him. The names added after this were written in pencil, not pen. She could not tell if Starbuck had been added, then erased, but suspected as much.   
  
Her mind toyed with the deeper philosophical implications of changing from pen to pencil as she carefully refolded the page along its well-worn seams and placed it back in the box beneath the rocks. If he had written Starbuck’s name in ink, would he have pushed so hard to find her when she was lost? If she were only penciled in, did that still leave the possibility of hope for erasure from the list? Laura thought they might be orbiting that planet still, had it been Lee he thought was down there; because surely nobody but Starbuck could have done what she did with the downed raider. Anybody else would have died down there, even Lee...  
  
Laura had perused the framed photographs and moved on to examining the meticulously crafted model sailing ship behind the Admiral’s desk, when he finally came through the hatch, depositing a duffel bag on the floor before he stopped to swing the portal shut. Tucked behind the corner as she was, he didn’t see her right away, and she had the chance to observe him for a moment. Saw him loosen his jacket automatically, pour himself a glass of water, wander over to a stack of reports on the couch and flip the top folder open. He made a move as if to sit down but paused midway, shaking his head and rising again.   
  
Laura’s giggle startled him, and he nearly spilled his water as he spun towards the sound.  
  
“I’ve been avoiding the couch, too, ever since I got here. And don’t even look at the bed, it’s painful.” She giggled again, covering her mouth with one hand and waving apologetically. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m done. Here’s your list, by the way.”  
  
“That’s okay. Nice change from the CIC, people hardly ever get the giggles there.” He had put the glass down and crossed the room to stand next to the desk, ignoring the file she tried to hand him. “You’ve probably earned a laugh.”  
  
“I hope I’ve also earned a good night’s sleep,” she quipped.  
  
“Laura.” He put his hands gently on her shoulders, the smile reaching his eyes again as she unfurled her arms and placed one hand lightly over each of his uniformed forearms. He lifted a long strand of her unruly hair, held it up for her inspection with a questioning glance; with equal skepticism, she delicately tweaked one end of his moustache where it grew far enough down to obscure the corner of his mouth. He shrugged philosophically:  _everybody needs a hobby_. Then he leaned forward just far enough for his forehead to touch hers, and let his eyes drift shut, his hand steal further over her shoulder, fingers slipping through her hair until he felt them curve neatly around the back of her head. She leaned in, sighing. With the other arm, he tucked her closer, nudging her arm up to his neck first, and so by degrees they approached the issue of embracing until a resolution had been reached.   
  
“You came back,” she whispered at last, because that one thought had been at the top of her mind for so many hours she had lost count.   
  
“Did you doubt me?” He pulled away just far enough to see her face, unwilling to let her go further. Her eyes were still half-closed, a peaceful smile curving her mouth.  
  
She thought for a long moment before answering. “No.”   
  
“You say it like you’re surprised…”   
  
Bill had shifted his hand forward just far enough to touch her cheek with the pad of his thumb. As he spoke, Laura turned her head a little, until her lips grazed the sensitive skin of his wrist, a sensual gesture turned sexual in an inadvertent instant. The galvanic reaction hit them both at the same time and their eyes flew together. Flustered, embarrassed, Laura tried to back away, but he tightened his arm around her waist, the tenderness on his weathered face suddenly clouded by hungry intent.   
  
Unable to resist, he ran his fingers up into her hair again and twined the silky stuff around his hand, effectively tying himself to her. Then he waited, studying her face as she slowly, warily, relaxed into him again.   
  
Laura hesitated only a short time, before she remembered that she had decided to try being honest with herself. She knew that after admiration and affection came that other “A,” word, attraction, and that the concept had been the elephant in the room that they had never talked about, since shortly before her near-death and miraculous recovery. Now they would talk about it, she resolved, and the fewer actual words in that conversation, the better. She raised her hands from Bill’s chest to his face, and met him halfway as he somewhat cautiously lowered his lips to hers.   
  
The last time Bill had kissed her, he meant “goodbye.” This time, he meant “welcome home,” and Laura had never felt so welcomed in her life. Everything about him, the way he held her as though he feared she might disappear, the way he whispered her name just before their lips met, the way he felt and smelled and tasted, drew her in, gave her solace, eased the homesickness that had become a fundamental part of her life. It was almost painful, the realization that if she had had this all along, had been with him all along, she would have been home all along instead of lost.   
  
It would have been impossible then, of course, for a dozen reasons, each more compelling than the next. But reasons are relative. In a society of almost fifty thousand souls, with a leader and a fighting force whose authority was rooted in the worlds they had left behind, there were military matters and there were civilian matters. But in this tribe of second-time refugees, with not quite thirty thousand and falling, the lines between civilian and soldier had begun to blur, that distinction a luxury they might no longer be able to afford.   
  
Or perhaps that was simply the rationalization each of them made for ignoring the reasons against what they had already decided to do, against taking comfort in one another, against eking what little joy they might out of a situation that had so recently seemed wholly incompatible with joy. Perhaps there was a silent acknowledgement between them that the dwindling odds of finding anyone else even remotely bearable among the very few candidates left made the reasons against seem pale and puny. And how could either go elsewhere, settle for “remotely bearable,” when this one kiss they had resisted for so long turned out to be so unreasonably perfect, so undeniably urgent, so  _right_?   
  
They were only human, after all.   
  
They pulled away slowly, by degrees, as they had come together: a last shared breath, another brush of the lips, stolen as an afterthought, a shaky whispering of “ _Bill_ ,” until they were once again standing forehead to forehead, arms entwined, but immeasurably closer than before.   
  
He had to clear his throat before he was able to speak. “Laura, I… was actually gonna tell you we had some quarters cleared for you. Um…”  
  
“You mean you’re not just going to chain me to your… rack?” Her preposterously huge grin did nothing to make the image less striking to Bill, whose astonished chuckle turned, midway, into a growl as he captured her lips again. More definitively this time, possessive, with lips parting, tongues savoring, the way of learning one another’s kiss foreshadowing the way they would learn one another’s body.   
  
“We’re out of our minds, you realize that,” she stated when speech became possible again.  
  
In reply he just smiled, and then released her with a final caress, pulled his glasses out of his breast pocket, and calmly began reading through the file she had brought him. She pointed out what was there, her focus shifted just as quickly as his.  
  
“The needs assessment is on top, and Major Agathon has already gone over it, made sure there’s no duplication with services already in place.”  
  
“’Number One: Re-establish representative democracy.’ No beating around the bush. Aren’t you going to feed your future voters first?”  
  
She narrowed her eyes at him. “The major has provisions under control already, as you well know. Don’t pick, Bill. I didn’t ask for this, not then and not now.”  
  
“I know,” he said softly. Not an apology, but something like it. “It’s the ideal. But whether we have the manpower to divide our functions up that way any more is a topic for more discussion.”  
  
“Can we discuss it after we get some sleep?” Laura eyed the couch again longingly. “Where’s our next stop, again?”  
  
“Aerolon. We have a team there salvaging mining equipment and converting some machinery for tylium refinement. If we can find any, that is. We can resupply there, too. With all the remaining fallout and all the scrap still floating around, we get into a low orbit, cut all nonessential power, and we’re pretty secure there. The CAP can give us enough early warning to get out if we need to.”  
  
“And once we’re resupplied, we go back for the others.”  
  
“Once we’re resupplied, we figure out what to do next.”  
  
“Bill – nobody gets left behind.”  
  
“Not if we can help it,” he reassured her. “But for right now, we probably need sleep more than we need to talk about this. You want me to show you to your quarters? It isn’t far.”  
  
She met his eyes, that enigmatic smile he found so fascinating playing around the corners of her mouth.   
  
“I’ll bet your couch is a  _lot_  more comfortable.”  
  
His eyes widened a bit as a vision of her on his couch – probably  _not_  the vision Laura had in mind, as it involved nothing remotely like sleep, or even clothing – briefly clouded his senses.  
  
“That’s… intriguing,” he said finally, tossing the file back on the desk and running his hands down her arms until his fingers found hers. “Are you serious?” He relished the feel of her hands turning in his, her fingers seeking a more intimate contact.  _Holding her hands turns me on and I’m on the wrong side of sixty. Thank the gods we didn’t meet thirty years ago, she’d have killed me._  
  
“We won’t be able to hide this, Bill. We might as well begin as we mean to go on.”  
  
“If we were doing that, you would  _not_  be on the couch.”  
  
The sudden intensity in his gaze tugged at her pulse points, an almost unbearable throbbing wherever her skin was thinnest.   
  
“We need to sleep more than we need to talk about this,” she murmured reluctantly, but couldn’t resist freeing one hand to bring a single delicate fingertip up to his mouth, indulging a sudden overwhelming impulse to trace the edge of his bottom lip. She withdrew regretfully, silently acknowledging the disconnect between her words and actions. “Sleep,” she repeated, more firmly.   
  
“Quickie?” he suggested with a broad smile, earning a snort and a smack on the chest.   
  
“What are we, teenagers? I doubt either of us is even capable of a quickie any more.”   
  
“Might surprise you.”  
  
“ _Stop_. Do you want me to go, or can I stay on your couch?”  
  
“I want you to stay. But I can’t promise your virtue will be safe.”   
  
She smiled back, gave his hand a final squeeze and moved away. “My virtue can take care of itself, thanks.”  
  
“Would you consider compromising it for a change of clothes?” He retrieved the duffel he had slung into the corner on his way in, and now unzipped it to reveal a jumble of drab offerings. “And unlimited use of the shower?”  
  
Laura snatched the bag away from him with a look of extreme gratitude, already on her way to the head. “I’ll give you a rain check,” she called over her shoulder. “I may be in here awhile…” And she disappeared, closing the door behind her.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
By the time she had finished in the shower – the first real shower she had enjoyed in well over a year – Bill was already asleep in the bunk, curled into the wall. Not snoring, but she thought he probably would at some point.  
  
The weeks away from the planet, working on the rescue, had clearly been good for him in some ways. He had lost nearly all the extra heft she had noticed on his most recent trip planetside. His tanks framed shoulders that once again seemed broad with strength, rather than with weight. Thirty he might not be, but neither was he an old man yet, no matter what the crew styled him. _Atlas_. He was such a very  _male_  male, she had always thought.   
  
He had left an extra pillow and blanket stacked neatly on the couch. Laura considered them for only a second or two before picking up the pillow and padding back to the bunk. Bill mumbled incoherently but edged over at her nudge, leaving just enough room for her to stretch out on her side and mold herself along his back. She draped her arm over his ribs and buried her face in his hair, sighing contentedly.   
  
“If I roll over in my sleep, you’ll wind up on the floor,” he said.   
  
Her eyes flew open. Then she smiled into his neck, and squeezed a fraction tighter. “I’ll take my chances.”  
  
Only human, and no spring chickens, after all. They fell asleep and stayed asleep, nestled together, each other’s defense and remedy against the chill of the ship and the prospect of humanity’s demise.


	5. Mercurial

_Love_  … is a quicksilver word; though you see plainly where it is, you have only to put your finger on it to find that it is not there but someplace else.  
  
\-- _Morton Hunt, The Natural History of Love_  
  


* * *

  
  
She was  _looking_  at him again. If he weren’t enjoying it so much, he would want her to stop, because it was so frakking distracting. She wasn’t even doing it on purpose. Lords help him if she decided to do that.   
  
“Admiral, is there any way to send some extra teams to the surface to investigate hydroponics equipment? Since the new transports have already been gutted anyway, maybe we can refit one for plant life. It would be worth exploring, if it meant we could eventually decrease our dependence on foraged supplies.”  
  
“If there’s time. We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin on the ground in one trip. We don’t have the pilots for it, for one thing.”  
  
“So it will depend on whether the Cylons find us… we should get out before that happens, though, it will increase the chance we can return to Aerolon if we need to.”  
  
“We’ll do what we can, Madame President.”   
  
She had made the best of the clothing situation, salvaging what she could from what she had on her back during the rescue, and putting up with hand-me-downs from the crew for the rest. She had borrowed a conservatively cut black skirt from someone, and was wearing it with the short-sleeved royal blue T-shirt she had been wearing planetside. No suit, but she somehow managed to look authoritative anyway.   
  
Except to Bill, who was finding himself suddenly unable to ignore the fact that the President had a fantastic pair of legs. He had always been able to filter this out before, despite being a committed leg man, despite having the academic knowledge that those legs existed and were attached to Laura Roslin; he was a grown man, a professional, you learned how to deal with that sort of thing early in any career.   
  
But now, with the unexplored potential that set of legs represented (combined with the knowledge that he was actually going to get to explore it as soon as they found the time), they were consuming nearly all his attention, resulting in an inner monologue during the meeting that went something like:  _Don’t look at her legs, don’t look at her legs, don’t look at—frak. Looked at her legs. So good… Look away, look away, look—frak. Not **there**. Why did she have to wear that top, anyway? Why couldn’t she have been rescued wearing that sort of granny suit that’s cut all the way up to her neck, with all the buttons? Gods, it’s been a long time, she would look damned good even in the granny suit. She’s… uncrossing her legs. She’s going to cross them the other way, do  **not**  watch her doing that. Frak._   
  
“Madame President, I think Pegasus has a Raptor team to spare for that project,” offered Lee, shrugging when his father gave him a look. “If we can find someone here who has a fair idea of where to start looking, they can be in and out fairly quickly. As long as the Cylons aren’t already here, they shouldn’t need extra cover, and they’d have jump coordinates if they needed them.”  
  
“Thank you, Commander, that will be very helpful. I’ll have someone take a look at the preliminary rosters and try to locate anyone who might be of assistance.” She was already stacking folders together, tapping them neatly on the table to align the edges. “Gentlemen, before we adjourn, has there been any progress on the intelligence front?”  
  
“Nope,” replied the elder Adama grimly. “We can’t get close enough until we have another Blackbird ready to go, the transports lost too much carbon in atmo to be useful right now. But Tyrol says he’ll have a bird ready within a week.”  
  
“Is there anyone to fly it? To get low enough to gather information and still get out if the Cylons do detect the Blackbird?”  
  
Bill looked over at his son, who wore the tight expression he had come to recognize as ‘Lee, trying to avoid talking about Kara Thrace.’ “We’ll have a pilot when the time comes. Commander, I know you’re eager to get back to your ship.”  
  
Lee took his leave of them courteously but abruptly, leaving them alone in the Admiral’s quarters at a rare time when neither of them had other, more pressing, engagements. Laura had been back on board only four days, but had already made her presence felt, and had set herself her usual grueling schedule. With limited crew, working staggered shifts, Bill was rarely in his cabin when Laura was there; they had managed to steal the odd glance, an intentional brush of hand or arm here or there, but not much else in the way of contact, and the unspoken tension only added to the strain of the trip itself.   
  
“Will Lee be all right, Bill?”   
  
He hadn’t expected her to lead with that, but had no trouble following the seeming non sequitur. Lee had been much on his own mind, and he understood Laura’s question but wasn’t sure he knew the answer.   
  
“He knows he frakked up. She might have frakked up more, or first, I don’t know, but he doesn’t deal well with his own mistakes. Now he has Dee stuck over there too, and she doesn’t deserve what’s happened. More mistakes. He’s just…” He shook his head in sadness, in disgust, feeling the pain of any parent who sees his child suffering the consequences of his actions, when the time to help is long past.  
  
She stood and crossed the room to stand behind him, slim hands kneading bowed shoulders to try to extract that pain. “I can’t give you a massage through the jacket,” she said after a minute of futile effort against wool and leather.   
  
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” He shrugged out of the jacket, baring his shoulders to her surprisingly assertive ministrations; she gave a good, but ruthless, massage.   
  
“Ow… oh, that works. Have you had dinner? Ow!”  
  
“Don’t be a baby. I know what I’m doing, here.”  
  
“I’ll just bet. Ahhh…”  
  
“I haven’t had dinner yet. Are you offering?”  
  
“Best the galley has to offer. Room service, too.”  
  
“It must be nice to be the admiral.”  
  
“Mmmm…”  
  
“Is this your night to sleep?”  
  
“Sleep? This is my turn to have eight hours off during the night cycle while Helo has the CIC.”  
  
“Then I suggest you order us something light, Admiral. We wouldn’t want to be uncomfortably full.”  
  


* * * * *

  
  
They had eaten, they had each enjoyed the very last drops of the very last bottle of ambrosia he had stashed away, and they had tacitly agreed to dispense with certain formalities in the interest of time. Laura had barely set her glass down when Bill rounded the table, a decisive gleam in his eye that sent a prickle of interest tripping along behind her nipples, up the backs of her thighs. _And he hasn’t even touched me yet. Gods._  
  
“The hatch is locked, right?” She thought to ask, as he pulled her up from her chair.  
  
“Yup.”   
  
And those were the last coherent words either uttered for some time thereafter.  
  
She surprised him pleasantly by breaking their kiss only to slide her hands under his tanks and skim the shirts up smoothly. When he obligingly lifted his arms and rid himself of the garments entirely, she followed suit with her own and then leaned back in, assaulting his chest with a run of gentle bites. She paused at the deep scar that bisected his sternum, and then deliberately placed a tender kiss at its apex as she ran her fingers down its length. Before she had tired of learning it, he countered with an approach to her neck, lifting her heavy hair free to reveal the milky skin, barely touching it with his lips as he worked his way from clavicle to ear. She melted into him when hot breath and moustache roused her touch-starved nerves, unwittingly returned the favor with a protracted moan that was huskier than he expected and sent the blood rushing away from his brain. Narrow fingers clutching firm shoulders reflexively, a broad hand rising to cup a lace-clad breast, brushing the nipple – already achingly erect – with one practiced circular sweep of the thumb. When he lowered his lips to repeat the act with his tongue, she pulled the bra off herself in frustration, replaced his head a little roughly, and cried out when he obligingly stopped teasing and suckled firmly. Then on to the other side, hands and mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair.   
  
Her head was thrown back, exposing her neck in a vulnerable posture that stirred the protective in Bill, even as it aroused him. He felt her hair brush his arm, and pushed his fingers up into the thick, autumnal waves, the textured strands a striking contrast with the creamy-smooth skin of her back. He liked backs, in truth, nearly as much as legs; an oddity, but there it was. And he realized he had never seen hers, a tremendous oversight.   
  
She was pliant, a little lust-drugged – very lust-drugged – and didn’t protest, just went with it when he turned her around, pulled her close again by tugging her hips back against his, and then ran his hands from her shoulders to her waist in silent reverence. Sensing he might like a more complete picture, she unfastened the skirt, sliding it past her hips and letting the weight of the gabardine, the silk of the lining, carry it down to the floor. Smiled, suppressed a giggle of delight, at hearing his  _extremely_  pleased growl. She kicked the skirt out of the way along with her shoes and arched pointedly back against him, lifting her arms to pull his head down to her neck, gasping when he nibbled at her ear. When his hands slid around her waist in tandem, bypassed her breasts and headed straight south, she actually whimpered with need, and actually didn’t care that he saw how he affected her. An openness she had never felt equal to before, but that seemed only natural with Bill. She could feel, through the layers of fabric still between them there, that whatever she did was clearly having an effect on him. And if there were ever a time to be unguarded with a lover, it was now, at the end of the world.  
  
“Black silk?” he asked, hooking a thumb through the narrow strap along her hip. “Is that practical?”  
  
“The rescue was come-as-you-are,” she said hoarsely, only concerned with how  _close_  his hands were to where she suddenly, desperately needed them to be. “Are you complaining?”  
  
“If you had worn those black pumps for the rescue, you’d be dressed perfectly for this occasion.” He let his fingertips play along the edges of the silk, never going too far, never going quite close enough, driving her rapidly insane.   
  
“I traded them for combat boots,” she admitted. “You’ll just have to picture it.  _Gods_ , Bill…”   
  
“Walk over to the rack,” he said, his raspy tone making, of this seemingly casual suggestion, a request akin to asking her to perform a sex act. Which, as it transpired, he more or less was.   
  
“Are you… planning to join me?”  
  
“In a minute.” He turned her in the right direction, let her go with the merest of pushes. “I just… want to watch you walk.”  
  
“O…kay. You’re making me blush, I hate that.” But she started walking, perversely enjoying the overwhelming self-consciousness.   
  
“Don’t worry about it,” he said honestly. “I’m not looking at your face.”  
  
Her peal of laughter carried her to the rack, where she turned and looked back with a raised eyebrow. Bill was following slowly, unbuckling his belt, unfastening his pants as he went.   
  
“If you don’t hurry it up, flyboy, I’m starting without you.”  
  
The sight of her with arms crossed beneath her bare breasts, one foot tapping out her impatience, spurred him forward. It was the work of a moment to back her towards the bunk, hands everywhere, his sliding the scrap of black silk over her hips and down, down, down her legs, hers more prosaically finishing the work of removing his pants and boxers.   
  
“Shoes,” she reminded him, loosing her grip on the fabric that obligingly dropped, puddled at his ankles.   
  
“Frak.” He nudged them off with his toes, leaning awkwardly with one hand on the edge of the bunk to take off his socks and shuck the trousers.   
  
“Trying to,” she replied, grinning.   
  
His face was still level with her hips, and instead of standing, he knelt – a soft  _oof_  of too-old-for-this going politely ignored by them both – and ran his hands down her legs in worship. Bent his head and nuzzled at their apex, only enough to inspire thought and frustration, then brought his hands up to cup her ass, holding her firmly in place as he swiped his tongue just once against her clit. She mewled, a flush rising from her core, and let his hands support her as her trembling knees threatened to give.  
  
“Mmmm… more,” he said, as if to himself, and stood only to scoop her up, smirking at her surprised squeak, and deposit her on the rack. A few brisk maneuvers had her on her back with her legs over the edge, protesting only in a token way when he took to his knees again and unceremoniously pushed her legs apart, picking up where he had left off. Only more.   
  
And then, the telephone rang.   
  
Wary animals, they both raised their heads instantly, Laura’s flopping down with an agonized groan as Bill cursed and reached for the handset.   
  
“Adama,” he barked into the unfortunate phone, then listened with increasingly obvious annoyance to the voice on the other side.   
  
“Well, why the frak didn’t they just leave it there? We can’t waste a ship to… what? How much?”  
  
This time, while he listened, Laura gently extracted herself from the remains of his embrace, and slid off the bunk with a resigned sigh. He watched her as she collected her clothes, then his, from the floor, still not quite ready to give up on the hope that sex might be occurring in their near future.   
  
“Wait,” he whispered to her, his hand over the mouthpiece, “It may not be –“ But when he gave his attention back to the caller, she nodded knowingly and set his clothes out on the bed.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
It had turned out to be an important find. One of the salvage crews had run across an abandoned superfreighter among the ring of refinery debris orbiting Aerolon; miraculously, the mammoth ship still bore its core of tylium intact, potentially salvageable. The vital fuel was notoriously unstable if not contained adequately, however, and because the attempt to tug the whole wreck out of the debris field and closer to Galactica had nearly resulted in the loss of a transport’s overloaded engine, Adama had sent a crew out to the freighter to try to extract the tylium and bring it back.  
  
He hated it, hated when anyone had to leave the Galactica for any reason. Even the CAP, even his trained fighters whose purpose on the ship was to leave, to throw themselves into harm’s way. Because once they left, he felt he could no longer ensure their safety, and with each day that passed, he felt more and more determined that they should all survive. And tylium was nothing to play with. Tyrol was on that team, but even with his expertise in things mechanical and otherwise plane-related, he was certainly prey to simple human error. And those, Bill knew, were really the most dangerous kind. Those errors were the ones that got people killed.   
  
Laura, at once more sensitive and more pragmatic about such fears, had listened as he expressed this, and then remarked that the military academy curriculum should spend a little time on economics; his dilemma was, at its heart, a cost-benefit analysis. There was only one way to get the tylium. The fleet needed the tylium to keep moving. They all needed the fleet to keep moving or none of them would survive. It always came down to the advisability of risking a few in exchange for a gain that could keep the rest of them alive.   
  
“Of course,” she concluded, “that doesn’t make it any easier to send them out there.”  
  
Until she said that last part, he had honestly wondered if she knew it. He sometimes had to remind himself to consider all those layers of appearance she wore through long habit, through years of self-protection and reserve and political game-playing. The outermost shell, soft and demure, a gorgeous woman who is just a bit shy, portrait of a maiden schoolteacher. Underneath that, revealing itself in even a short acquaintance, a control like ice, a brutal honesty and practicality that paid lip service to, but seemed never to really encompass, the factor of emotion. Even her own emotion.   
  
And the next layer, the one he had spent at least two years finding, was the one he had thought to be the true one, where all that emotion was hiding. The one for which she would violate the ethics of the other two, because of something she knew in her heart to be an even more powerful truth.   
  
It had taken the cancer, and the cure, and the time in purgatory on New Caprica, to strip away much of her protective armor, leaving her more willing to put off the pretense of softness when it wasn’t there, more able to show the softness that was there. But now, he thought he saw a glimpse of something deeper still, just since her arrival back on Galactica. Deeply amused at the absurdity of their impossible life, irreverent about anything except the absolute truth, and sometimes even about that. Unabashedly sensual, totally fearless, absolutely glorious. She had become, somehow, unconditional.  
  
Or perhaps this was who she became only for him, only when wrapped in the warm blanket of his constant regard.   
  
And now she locked eyes with him across the glow of the war room table, glaring as he refused to consider the hydroponics mission, and the irony was that she might be infuriating, but now he still, irrevocably, also saw her as glorious. Part of his brain spun out the daydream of granting her anything she asked, banishing Gaeta and Lee and the two tactical subalterns in attendance, taking her heatedly against the table, seeing her backlit by the glare, her hair a nimbus of dark fire, as she screamed out his name…  
  
He shook his head to clear the unsolicited vision, glared back at her in irritation as though she were at fault for his temporary lapse, and reminded her that it was a military decision – one of her least favorite phrases, he was well aware. And then, like the coward he really was not, he announced the discussion was over, and strode away.   
  
He hadn’t progressed very far – at least she waited until a relatively isolated stretch of corridor – before he heard her sure step and quietly determined voice behind him.   
  
“That was  _bullshit_. Admiral.”  
  
He stopped, chewed on the inside of one cheek reflectively, then turned around. There seemed nobody to hear them, but he stepped closer, for privacy’s sake.   
  
“ _You_  are calling bullshit?”  
  
“Yes. I am calling bullshit, because I know it when I hear it. And that was it.”   
  
“With the tylium salvage operation we do not have the manpower on either battlestar to spare for the hydroponics idea, and that is –“  
  
“I am  _not_  talking about the hydroponics and you know it. Although we do all need to eat, and I think you’re just being stubborn.” She moved in, pinning him with her fierce gaze. “I was talking about the ‘military decision.’ You’re the one who keeps saying we can’t afford the separation. There are no solely military decisions any more, Admiral. We’re all there is. It is a  _joint_ call.”  
  
“That’s a pretty big leap.”  
  
“It’s one you’d have made first if you thought it were convenient for  _you_.”  
  
True, but he hardly expected her to come right out and say it. Why he hadn’t expected it, he wasn’t sure. And now she was  _looking_  at him. And there was no handy storage locker to pull her into.   
  
“Can we talk about it later?” he growled through clenched teeth.   
  
She looked at him incredulously, then with suspicion, then with dawning comprehension. One quick glance downward confirmed her hypothesis, and she couldn’t restrain a snicker.  
  
He rolled his eyes, sighing heavily. “Can we  _please_  talk about it later?”  
  
“Oh, we’ll talk about it,” she assured him, smirking.   
  
“Thank you,” he said tightly, turning his back and continuing down the hall, tuning out the second snicker that preceded her reply.   
  
“Oh, you’re welcome, Admiral. Very,  _very_  welcome.”  
  
He had a new sympathy for Tyrol. If he didn’t frak her senseless soon, he might just have to kill her. 


	6. Aphrodisiac

Calms appear, when Storms are past;  
Love will have his Hour at last:  
Nature is my kindly Care;  
Mars destroys, and I repair;  
Take me, take me, while you may,  
Venus comes not ev’ry Day.  
  
\-- _John Dryden_  
  


* * *

  
  
They had come as always, without warning, swifter than thought, leaving flight as the only option as fight was clearly not a choice conducive to survival. But years can teach even old dogs new tricks, and the humans had their plan at the ready. They knew there must still be Cylon infiltrators in the fleet, but thus far none had broken the elaborate code set up to protect the jump coordinates by which they now made their disjointed way to the next stopping place. A short series of ten hops, one every few minutes, then another day spent jumping at intervals, until they were assured of at least a few days’ peace.   
  
Cythera, they called the planet in whose orbit they had arrived. It was actually a charted planet, though it had never been an inhabitable one. Its main attraction was its primary moon’s location in an asteroid belt that evidently contained both tylium ore and naturally occurring barium titanate.  
  
“Which is valuable to us… why?” asked Laura, hoping Gaeta would keep his answer short and geared towards the relatively ignorant.  
  
“The tylium we just need, obviously. The barium titanate crystals will help make it hard for them to find us once we’re in the vicinity of the belt. It’s photorefractive, and has some other… okay, it does strange things to light, and even the natural electrical charge present due to some other metals in the field may reverse the spontaneous dipole moment that… um. Sometimes may work like a magnet, sometimes not. With changing polarities. So it will look like a regular asteroid field, but when you try to scan it long-range, results will be inconsistent. Scrambled, basically. It won’t mess up the instruments, it will just be hard to read.”  
  
“So it will work like flak,” she suggested, noting the smiles of approval on the faces of the two military men. Such little boys… she had spoken their language, and made them happy. And proud, in Bill’s case. “What will it do to our own ship-to-ship communications?” Oh, prouder and happier still.   
  
“Some local interference, but we’ve worked out some protocols for it. We’ll want to keep it to a minimum. It’s a rare case, but while we’re here it will be safer to shuttle over to another ship than to use the com. They can still track radio activity, and there will be no interference for that if they happen to get close enough to pick it up.”  
  
“I see. Thank you, Felix.”   
  
“Yes, Mr. Gaeta, thank you,” Bill added, displaying his customary touch of irritation that Laura continued to use his officer’s first name even though he was back on duty.   
  
She smiled sweetly at him and proceeded with her agenda. “Thanks are also due, and I don’t know to whom, for the planetside salvage work on Aerolon. In particular for whoever thought of taking the foraging into department stores. And wherever they found the toiletries. I think I speak for us all when I say that was a long overdue measure for most of the refugees.”  
  
“That would be Racetrack, I believe.”  
  
“Lieutenant Edmondson,” clarified Bill.   
  
“We’ll have to commend her. It’s been a big boost to everyone’s morale to have a few changes of clothes. And shoes. And  _shampoo_. I know it’s boosted my morale,” Laura added, glancing down at the garnet-colored sweater she had acquired thanks to the sanctioned looting.   
  
Bill had stared studiously at his shoes all the while Laura talked about clothes, so he was caught off guard at the sudden sound of a baby crying. Maya leapt up, apologizing profusely, and stepped through the hatch that separated the outer and inner offices of Laura’s “suite.” She returned, a moment later, with Isis still weeping on her shoulder. The toddler looked tousled, her scant wisps of dark hair wild with sleep, her cherubic little face still bearing the livid imprint of a wrinkle from her blanket as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and then eyed the two men warily.   
  
“I’m so sorry,” the baby’s ersatz mother repeated, jouncing Isis gently up and down unconsciously as she spoke. “Jamie couldn’t watch her, at the last minute, and…”  
  
She was apologizing to Adama and Gaeta, as Laura had obviously known about the napping child in her office. Gesturing to Maya to keep taking notes, she shushed her aide’s apologies and took the baby automatically, bouncing her with both knees at the same tempo Maya had employed. Isis, clearly used to this routine, twisted in Laura’s lap and seized her glasses from her face. The child gnawed contentedly on the eyewear until Laura deftly finagled an exchange with a small plastic rattle she seemed to procure out of nowhere.   
  
Bill watched this routine with a mix of horror and fascination. He knew who the baby was, of course, but at the same time, he was a father himself, and Isis was only a baby. And looked as human as any other of the babies he had seen in his day. In fact, she was a somewhat fetching toddler, and he could easily imagine how Laura had grown fond of her. But still… half-Cylon. Nobody really knew  _what_  the creature was.  
  
On the other hand, watching Laura dandle the child on her knee so capably, so casually, occasionally stopping to tickle or nuzzle Isis even as she managed affairs of state, gave him a whole new appreciation for her. She might never be the mother of his own children, that ship had long since sailed, but she seemed primed for grandmotherhood, and it suddenly made her even more desirable.   
  
Because there was not much more to discuss until the scouts had finished locating the most likely tylium deposits, and then until the extraction equipment and retrofitted refinery vessels were in place, they tabled the meeting earlier than planned. Once Isis had put in her appearance, things had become somewhat unproductive in any case. Maya made off with the baby, a suddenly very attentive Felix in tow, and Bill leaned over the desk as the hatch closed behind them.   
  
“Nice sweater,” he said with a trace of a leer. “You have drool on your left shoulder.”  
  
“Typical,” she replied with a shrug. “She always gets the same spot.”  
  
“Always? You make a habit of letting… that baby… drool on you?”  
  
“Bill… don’t. Really. She’s just a baby. And she’s a she. I have changed enough of her diapers to vouch for that. So just let it go, until we know differently, please?”  
  
He studied her, trying to assess her resolve, his heart feeling a pang when he realized that although she was obviously determined, she mainly just looked exhausted.   
  
“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” he said, and noticed her shoulders sag with relief at the dropped issue. “We have some time here, a few days at least. Almost a vacation. What do you want to do on your vacation, Madame President?”  
  
She pushed the stack of files in front of her aside and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes to let the delicious concept of ‘vacation’ flow over her. “A walk on the beach, a new book that I can read all the way through in one sitting, dinner outside at sunset, and, let’s see, sleep. And a shower. Probably more than one shower. With  _real_  shampoo –“  
  
“My shampoo is real.”  
  
“—that doesn’t smell like musk aftershave –“  
  
“Picky.”  
  
“—and when I get out, I have clean pajamas to put on. Heaven.”  
  
“Hey.” She opened her eyes to find him standing next to her chair, about to swoop in for a kiss. “I didn’t want to startle you,” he explained, before swooping.   
  
It was a horrible position, the angle was all wrong, but they both knew it was merely a placeholder for later kisses.  
  
“The beach is out. The ocean on Cythera is something like sulfuric acid. So no dinner outside, either. But the rest, I think we can work with.”  
  
She gave him a cockeyed smile. “So I’ll have to settle for  _nearly_  perfect. I can live with that.”  
  
“I’m due back on the bridge. I have something to show you later, though. Meet me outside the observation deck at eighteen hundred hours.”  
  
“Inspiration Point? Gee, Bill. Somebody might start getting suspicious.”  
  
“Cute. Just be there. Then we’ll go home and you can take a shower and wear your jammies to dinner. The book, you’ll have to read another time.”  
  
He had been gone for over ten minutes before Laura realized he had just described his quarters as their home, and she hadn’t even batted an eye.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
There were only two other people in the observation lounge, and both had departed rapidly if politely after realizing who had just come in. Bill smirked and locked the hatch behind them, murmuring something about “Admiral’s prerogative.”  
  
And then he pointed out the wide port, and Laura forgot about anything else when she saw the ‘sunset.’  
  
Like a halo around the silhouetted planet, the asteroid belt with its unique combination of ores and crystals caught the last of the bluish sun’s light and gave it back a thousandfold, a glittering iridescent nimbus in which it was no longer possible to spot the individual points of light. Had the port not been polarized and shielded, the sight would have literally blinded; as it was, it was dazzling, and Laura caught her breath sharply in wonder at its beauty.  
  
Bill felt much the same, although he was not looking out the window. After a moment, he spoke softly in her ear. “Does it make up for the beach?”  
  
She could only nod, and lean back against him, and gaze and gaze until the ship’s path took it too far in opposition to the sun for the effect to be visible any longer.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
Dinner might have been equally as perfect, shared as it was curled up on the couch, Laura in lavender flannel pajamas, Bill in tanks and sweats, wielding their chopsticks for emphasis as they debated companionably over bowls of spicy noodles.  _Might_  have been, but in his anticipation of what was undoubtedly in store for them later in the evening, Bill made the error of mentioning the Corridor Incident of a few days prior, inciting Laura to an equally unfortunate rejoinder regarding the distinction between military and civilian decisions.   
  
“And we did say we would discuss it later,” she added, placing her empty bowl on the coffee-table trunk and aligning her chopsticks on top before turning back to face him. Her seeming calm only irked him more.   
  
“Now? You want to talk about it now?”  _Not_  what he had planned for the evening’s entertainment…  
  
“I’m thinking about it now. If we don’t talk about it I’ll just be… distracted by it.”   
  
“Fine. This is when you want my take on this?” He took his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he spoke. “There may be no room to distinguish between the two anymore, but there are still going to be certain decisions about resources, tactics, that just  _need_  military expertise.”  
  
“So in those instances your opinion would just trump everyone else’s.”  
  
He felt distinctly uneasy about her tone, which sounded far too placid to be believed. “The people with the right background to make the decision should always be –“  
  
“That’s a military autocracy, then.” She was looking somewhere in the vicinity of the table, rather than at him, and spoke so mildly he almost didn’t realize she had interrupted him. “I’m just trying to clarify this.”  
  
“I don’t want martial law, Laura.”  
  
“Well, you certainly don’t seem keen on democracy.”  
  
“Those are the only two options? What’s the word for a government run by a religious visionary? A theocracy? Magocracy?”   
  
“ _Excuse me?_ ” She was facing him now, and he sort of wished she were still looking at the table. “The democratic process is—“  
  
“ _Frak_  the democratic process, this is survival we’re talking about!” He slammed his bowl on the trunk for emphasis, and his chopsticks flew into the air, one wheeling end over end and striking him squarely in the center of the forehead, leaving a dab of reddish sauce to punctuate his startled expression.   
  
The moment hung over them silently, interminably, until Laura’s efforts to keep her face neutral failed, and a smirk escaped, followed by a highly unpresidential giggle. Stony-visaged, feathers clearly ruffled, Bill leaned down to pick up the fallen chopsticks and replace them with exaggerated precision into the bowl.   
  
Laura leaned forward as he sat up again, and very carefully extended one middle finger to his scowling brow, swiping the sauce off neatly and holding it up for his inspection. Then, with another giggle, she just as carefully brought the finger to her mouth and first licked, then sucked the sticky stuff away in a manner that was excruciatingly demure, yet left very little to the imagination.   
  
He was on her before she could say another word, using his momentum to topple her with a kiss that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. All lip and thrusting tongue, an odd clash of teeth, his one impatient thigh already parting hers, with a hand under her hip for leverage. All of which met with Laura’s enthusiastic approval. She arched up to meet him, slipping her hands under the waistband of his sweatpants and savoring the contact and his immediate response.   
  
Clothing began to fly, his tanks ending up on the floor just past the trunk, her pajama top draped over his desk, his sweats by the entrance to the bunk room, all these distances measuring the relative intensity of their increasing need to feel skin on skin. But then he cheated, sliding down and pinning her legs with his weight, peppering her belly and hips with kisses as he inched her pajama bottoms down with mindblowing patience. He laved and nibbled at each increment of newly exposed flesh, chuckling at her frustrated groans, her ineffectual attempt to speed things along.   
  
“Shouldn’t we move this to the bed?” she interjected at one point, when still relatively coherent. “We could stain the leather…”  
  
“In my experience, it’ll never show.” He continued his delicious torture, hovering around the pulse points between hip and thigh, teasingly nipping his way from one side to the other.   
  
“That was a little more information than I needed,” she said, but all she could really think was,  _lower, lower, lower_.  
  
“Quiet, please. I’m working, here.”  
  
“And apparently, it isn’t the first time,” she sassed, squealing as he nipped a little harder. Then speech relinquished the field, as he tired of toying and went for the coup de grace, whipping her pants down in a single fluid motion and just as quickly sinking back between her legs to place a kiss firmly on her vulva. She whimpered, startled, and arched helplessly into his mouth as he dipped his tongue between her folds.   
  
Bill loved her voice, but he relished even more his evident ability to render her speechless; each audible sigh, each incoherent noise of pleasure he elicited from her, only served to make him harder, make him want her more keenly, which he would not have thought possible. Nor would he have thought possible, at this stage of his life, the abrupt physical response she seemed to call up in him. The frustration, the long nights of celibacy, but also something in her that he felt he could happily spend the rest of his life trying to pinpoint.  _She makes me crazy, and I like it_. As simple as that.   
  
When he shifted his attention to her clit, she froze, tried to pull away.   
  
“Not yet. Bill, stop, not yet. Not this time…” And she urged him upward, until they were face to face, and she reached down without preamble and guided him inside her with a sigh that might have been wordless, might have been, “ _Yes_.”  
  
She was already undone, and she had known it. He thrust into her once, then twice, sheathing himself fully in her heat, and when he hit bottom the third time she came shuddering apart around him, clutching his back and almost screaming as she lost her hard-won control. It was all he could do not to follow her, watching her face transformed by passion, feeling her tighten in tempo with her cries.   
  
 _So that’s what Laura looks like_ , came the unbidden thought; and he had never thought her so beautiful. He moved inside her, not too steadily, wanting to make it last, wondering if he could make her come again.   
  
“So good,” she was saying huskily. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t… just too good. Oh, my gods.” A sweet aftershock rippled over her, and she writhed against him, enthralled to it.  
  
His laugh was shaky. “ _I’m_  not sorry.”   
  
She could only muster a half-smile, as bliss edged slowly away leaving smug satisfaction in its wake. Opening her eyes, she saw him looking at her with almost frightening intensity, a sudden more forceful thrust reminding her he was still in the middle of that first, heated onslaught.  _He’s barely tame,_  but it was more than that, she knew he was overcome with  _her_ , and the rush of power the idea brought was almost as arousing as what he was doing inside her.   
  
Almost.   
  
An experiment: she reached down between them, letting her fingers play over the length of his cock when he withdrew, encircling and stroking when he flexed his hips back into hers, until his breathing grew ragged and he stopped moving altogether.   
  
“Don’t stop now,” she urged, but he shook his head, jaw clenched, eyes closing for a moment as he concentrated.   
  
“Not yet. Mmm.” Swallowing, he tried again. “We should roll over.”  
  
“I like this…”  
  
“I want to see all of you,” he explained, already curling to one side, pulling her over, running his hands down her back to her ass with an appreciative sigh. When she sat up, kissing him gently first, he repeated the move down her front, lingering here and there, wonder written on his face. “Perfect.”  
  
“Proof that love is blind,” she said, but fondly. He chuckled, tugged on her shoulders and pulled her down for another kiss, exploring her mouth with first-date enthusiasm.   
  
“Perfect,” he reiterated when he finally released her, and she just smiled and straightened her arms, bracing against his shoulders as she started to move. Barely, at first, just pulsing really, squeezing firmly with each beat, grinning when it made him cry out.   
  
Faster little by little, taking time they probably did not have, and she was amazed at the way his normally impassive face showed  _everything_. Just for her.  _Mine_. And, had she known it, he was thinking the same thing at that moment. She gripped tighter with fingers and thighs, astonished to realize she was actually near climaxing again ( _Richard never accomplished that… oh, Laura, so uncharitable, he’s dead now anyway_ ).   
  
Her breathing, something, must have given her away, because Bill’s eyes opened and he  _knew_. For a mad moment she panicked, felt too on display to go through with it. Then he put his hands to her breasts, fondled gently, let their weight shift into his palms, the change of sensation distracting her. When he made another change, rolling each nipple between a thumb and forefinger, then pinching sharply, almost enough to hurt, she came with a gasp, the orgasm blindsiding her. It was too much, it swept Bill along in its wake, and he grabbed her waist and pushed himself up with a groaning burst into the heat, the slick tightness, the shuddering sensation of heaven that was Laura, his Laura,  _his. Theirs. Us._  
  
And although the entire universe did not pause for them at that moment, we can forgive them if they were both sure it did.   
  
The moment passed, and others like it, but calmer, sweeter, the room slowly resuming its focus around them. Though neither was in a hurry to return from such delectable chaos, the natural order of things eventually demanded the opening of eyes, the slightly sheepish but contented smiles, the exchange of certain words.   
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Mmmm?”  
  
“Where have you been hiding that thing all this time?”  
  
She felt his hoarse, shocked laughter more than heard it, snuggled as she was with her ear against his chest.   
  
“I have my ways. Wouldn’t want to frighten the recruits.”  
  
Laura raised her head, a giddy grin lighting her face. “Aye- _aye_ , Sir.”  
  
They smiled into each others’ eyes long enough for things to turn sweet again, and shared a string of soft kisses, a different sort of conversation, all questions answered in the gentle affirmative. When he finally slipped away from her, she sighed, feeling bereft, incomplete. A little sore, but it had, after all, been a  _very_  long hiatus.   
  
Things became more inevitable. The sweat cooling on their bodies began to prickle uncomfortably. His leg was cramping. Her mouth was dry. Reluctantly, they rose, helping one another up with well-earned groans and grimaces, and made their way to the shower. It was not an efficient cleaning experience, but it served the purpose well enough. A few minutes more saw them back into pajamas and into the bed – Laura making a side trip with a damp cloth to see to the couch which, as promised, showed no evidence of their activity once she was through – where they spooned, her back to his stomach, and considered their future as they fell peacefully asleep. The future would be substantially the same in its details, of course; but this much, at least, had been accomplished, a joining that neither of them thought for a moment was primarily physical.   
  
Although, of course, they were also each other’s best frak ever, which certainly didn’t hurt.


	7. Mnemonic

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.  _– Luis Bunuel_  
  
God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.  _– J. M. Barrie_  
  


* * *

  
  
 _Now, Mnemosyne the Titaness was the mother of the Muses, who were sired upon her by Zeus. Four of the nine Muses had mainly to do with poetry, that being a widely encompassing topic for the Greeks. Some of these served double duty, of course. Polyhmnia, for example, inspired both sacred poetry and geometry, a fitting muse perhaps for someone like Felix Gaeta, faithfully plotting the courses that might one day lead humanity to Earth. Of the other five Muses, history, tragedy, and comedy each concerned one nearly full-time, as did dancing. Although of these five, another two had at least one branch of poetry each to look after. Those Greeks were very big on poetry. And then there was Urania, muse of both astronomy and astrology, which we must never forget were inextricably linked for the ancients.  
  
But before there could be the Muses, there had to be Mnemosyne; before there could be either poetry or history, there had to be memory. We are what we are, we rejoice in or mourn for what we have been, because of memory.   
  
Had they been looking only to their future, only to the survival of the human race, the leaders of the fleet would never have considered going back for the rest of the benighted New Capricans. Genetically, practically, their thousands were sufficient to engender new generations of sufficient diversity to sustain the species without those additional few. Fortunately for the New Capricans, genetics are not what makes us human; memory is. And memory, or the avoidance of unbearable memories, is what made it necessary for the fleet to attempt a second rescue; the memory of not doing so would have hounded them all to death, if they hadn’t.   
  
What made the Cylons different was not their lack of human ancestry; it was their inherent inability to create poetry. As computers, they had a tremendous capacity to remember events, details, data. But as a race, they had very little memory of anything important at all. For the Cylons, there were no roses in December, because every Cylon knows that roses do not bloom in December.   
  
Bill has come to think of Laura as Mnemosyne, of late. Source of all poetry, the mother of history, wellspring of all that helps humans maintain their humanity. He is, of course, deeply into the first flushes of romantic love. He certainly considers himself Zeus, not Atlas, in this analogy. If anyone is going to father some metaphorical Muses on Mnemosyne, he definitely feels he is the one for the job. _  
  
  
Those two weeks were the stuff memories were made of. A quiet, collective pause for breath, an easing of restraints. A shore leave without going ashore. Oh, they were still on the alert, with a tension that would never fully be released until some sort of actual conclusion to the war had been reached. But they all slept a little easier, smiled a bit more often, and indulged the sense of play that had been sorely missing from all their lives.   
  
There was hard work to be done, of course. Tylium does not refine itself, and hundreds of civilians had volunteered to assist in the effort to get the job done in time. But there were also practical jokes, pickup pyramid games, and time for new lovers to do whatever it is new lovers are wont to do. Whatever it was, they did a lot of it; they knew they would need those memories like roses, to sustain them when winter inevitably arrived.   
  
For Kara Thrace, it was time to see her husband grow well enough to warrant leaving; she departed in the newly outfitted Blackbird, reconnoitered successfully on New Caprica, and was able to report back with relatively good news. The Cylons, it seemed, had consolidated the remaining settlers into a much smaller encampment, close by the large new building. Estimates indicated there were still some four thousand survivors there, although high-altitude photographs could only show so much. There might be more inside the mystery building, but there was no good way to find that out. At least, contained as they were, the humans would be relatively easier to evacuate, if it were possible to get close enough to them with transports. Security seemed only nominally higher, as if the Cylons did not expect them to return.  
  
“Only four thousand left,” whispered Laura, resisting the urge to get up, go to her white board and check her tally, as she did too often in any given day.   
  
“Shhh. You have to stop thinking about it,” Bill mumbled, already half-asleep. He wrapped himself more tightly around her, kissing the back of her head fondly. “Get some sleep.”  
  
“I don’t think I can,” she admitted. “Maybe I’ll get up and read for awhile.”   
  
Bill’s arm stayed firmly in place; he wasn’t letting her go anywhere. “You won’t read, you’ll just sit up and brood. Then you’ll be cranky in the morning.”  
  
“You already know that much about me? I’m impressed…”   
  
Something in the tone of her voice, teasing, low, woke Bill up just a bit more. “I’m an impressive guy,” he replied, just to get a reaction.   
  
“Parts of you, anyway,” she snorted, and wriggled back against him rather lewdly.  
  
It always astonished him, but it delighted him too, every single time she let her elegant façade down and her earthy nature show through. Almost always when he wasn’t looking, that was when it was most effective. She would pop out a line that would make a sailor blush, and yet when he glanced her way she would meet his eyes with a straight face and that earnest, reserved expression… maddening. And she knew it, he had discovered. Did it on purpose, knowing exactly what it did to him.   
  
“I could give you something else to think about,” he suggested, spreading his fingers out against her stomach.   
  
“Thought you were tired.”  
  
“Yep. Still want to frak you, though.”  
  
He felt her shiver, grinned against her hair. Let his hand tease lower, too slowly for her taste.   
  
“Aren’t we too old to be going on like this?” She grabbed his wrist, tried to hurry him along to no avail, and growled in mock frustration when he laughed. “One of us is going to have a heart attack, or break a hip, and you know the hell we’ll catch from Cottle about  _that_.”  
  
“He’d just be glad to know we were exercising. Although you already seem pretty fit…”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“Don’t mention it.”  
  
“Pretty fit yourself.” She loosened her grip, stroked upward along his arm, fingers detailing each division between muscles until he finally stopped teasing and got down to business. “Mmmm…”  
  
“Mmmm?”  
  
“Mmmm.”  
  


* * * * *

  
  
And so the humans went back for their brothers. Many approaches were discussed, but in the end, the only thing that seemed feasible was to do what they had done before: go right in the front door, hell-bent for leather, all guns blazing, grab as many as they could while holding the Cylons at bay, and pray to the Lords of Kobol to protect fools and little children. The one thing the Cylons would not be expecting, they hoped: that they would do exactly the same thing again.   
  
“And take out as many of the motherfrakking toasters as we can while we’re there,” added Starbuck, climbing into the Blackbird after kissing her recuperating husband goodbye. Earlier, while discussing her mission privately with the Admiral and the President, she had said her goodbyes. As good as parents to her now, perhaps – certainly more to her than her own parents had ever been – but had they had the raising of Kara, she would not have become Starbuck, and it was Starbuck they needed now. Starbuck, indeed, who volunteered for her particular part in the day’s events. Who suggested it, and would see it through. She had shorn her hair after her first mission in the Blackbird, complaining that it made her helmet fit wrong; now, she looked again like the young warrior she was, as she settled into the cockpit and began her preflight check.   
  
Two transports, two Raptors, and the Blackbird set out from Galactica, all invisible unless the Cylons had begun relying on their naked eyes rather than instruments. The Blackbird in particular had limited faster-than-light capabilities, but the jump was not a long one. They were already into the atmosphere of the planet, seeking their landing, when the two Battlestars and their complements of Vipers jumped in on top of the Cylon basestars. All their firepower was brought to bear in a last, desperate bid for time. And, miraculously, it was just time enough.   
  
They had gauged correctly, and the Cylons had not anticipated they would try the same gambit again. Caught with their proverbial pants down, with fewer Centurions activated than the last time, the overlords mustered their arms and defenses too late to prevent the landing. Some thirty-two hundred survivors made it onto the transports, another few stragglers on the Raptors, and as they took off and headed for home, the Blackbird soared through and shot her deadly payload into the building that had haunted all their dreams. The mushroom cloud was just cresting as the fleet and the squadron of rescuers flicked out of sight, out of range of the Cylon defenders.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
Laura had known he was right, to insist she wait with the unarmed vessels, with the bulk of humanity, while the battle was waged. She had known, but had hated him for it. And loved him for it. She wanted to say, although she did not, that she would rather die with him than live without him. But he had appealed to her better nature, and so she had remained silent in the end, and kissed him, and let him walk away, and eaten her tears. She had shown her strongest face to the tag ends of mankind, because he asked her to.   
  
They returned, and only then did she let herself believe in the possibility that they might succeed. When her transport finally docked, and she was able to walk back onto Galactica’s deck and see him, she wore her strong face still, and smiled bravely. She walked to his side, greeted the newly rescued, and helped arrange for their keeping with all the efficiency anyone might ask. Her staff was green but capable, and together they saw to everyone’s needs admirably.   
  
Only later, alone in their quarters, did she allow herself the luxury of expression. In tears and words, the babble and flow taking her over, a catharsis that began with fear and was sustained by love. She told him everything she felt, in much more detail than was probably wise, and he simply held her and said, “I know… I know.”   
  


* * * * *

  
  
Saul Tigh had made it, but there was some question as to whether he would be able to return to active duty. The loss of an eye would have disqualified him from the military of the past, but these days such a restriction seemed moot; Bill was the voice of the military, and he wanted his exec back.   
  
Bill almost hadn’t recognized Ellen, when she reboarded Galactica with her husband. No makeup, hair and clothing in disarray, and looking her age, which was a good deal older than she would ordinarily allow anyone to suspect. It had been the saving of her, however; she was only just too old to suffer the fate of the hundreds that had disappeared into the fortified building. Ellen was better groomed when next Bill saw her, but would never resume the fabulous luster she had once struggled to maintain. Saul was if anything even more attentive, but no longer under her thumb, and she in turn seemed to have lost her roving eye and careless tongue; yet Bill thought, for the first time, he understood what his friend saw in the woman. Now, on the other side of such extremity, she actually seemed beautiful.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
_On her best day, Ellen Tigh never looked half that good,_  Bill thought, though, when the President addressed the newcomers after their position had been once again secured. She was exhausted, too thin, none the better for her own time served on New Caprica, but he was stunned by her. Amazed, as he always was lately, that he could have spent so much time around her in the past without being overcome by longing. Admiration and respect, he acknowledged openly. Even their warmth with one another, their friendship, had become more widely known of late. But the one urge he could not give in to was the strongest, the urge to announce to the crowd at large that this astonishing creature shared his life, his bed, let down her guard only for him, was _his_.   
  
And now that they were on their way to Earth once more, he decided to devote some time to determining just how he might stake such a claim, and to wondering whether or not his Laura would allow herself to be claimed by him.


	8. Saturnalia

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine  
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought  
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;  
For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,  
The comfort that you made?  
  
 _\--William Butler Yeats_  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The mood after the President’s speech was dark and festive at the same time, making for an edgy and slightly manic celebration. They feted not only life, that night, but grim survival at a terrible cost. It was a wake for the dead, as well as an affirmation for the living, and the hangover toll in the morning would be unspeakable.   
  
But morning was a long way off, and so were the Cylons, and the inhabitants of every ship in the fleet gave in to the primal urge to cast inhibitions to the wind now the danger was past.   
  
Chief Tyrol and his bride made Laura an offer, nearly ceremonial, of some clear liquid in a small metal cup. She met Bill’s eye, he shrugged, and she did what any strong leader must; she knocked it back without a flinch, handed the cup back nonchalantly as the assembled crew whistled and applauded, and politely asked for another which she neatly downed as well.   
  
Bill was impressed, as always; the knuckledraggers had made him the same offer, and he had nearly choked on their rotgut brew. Asking for a second had been out of the question. Maybe it was something they taught in some special politician charm school, he speculated. How to lie while looking people in the eye, how to believe your own rhetoric, how to kick back a shot of anything without blinking twice…  _Cynical, Bill. Maybe she’s just that good, all on her own._  
  
Kara Thrace, on the other hand, complained loudly about the nature and quality of the demonic liquor, even as she consumed far too much of it. Anders, still too fresh from his illness to overindulge, watched her closely throughout the evening, shepherded her away from fights, distracted her with dancing and flirtation. Bill watched his little girl self-destruct with a keen ache, knowing the pain she tried to suppress, knowing she would never be able to, any more than she would ever be able to talk about it: she had done, for those left on New Caprica, the same thing she had done for the women at the farm on old Caprica, and even if she never saw their faces, they would haunt her for the rest of her life. Not a pretty secret to start humanity’s fresh journey to Earth, but none of them would argue it was not necessary; nor, of course, would the few who knew about it ever advertise it to the masses.   
  
Bill was still sober enough to feel vaguely glad Kara had not wound up with Lee, who would be more likely to chide her, incite her to riot, than to safeguard her through such a time of need; Anders, for all his brawn-over-brain appeal, was actually a savvy strategist, and had a sensitivity Bill knew his own son lacked. It was the same sensitivity Zak had possessed, actually; it filled some emptiness in Starbuck, evidently, made her complete in a way Lee never could have. Just as, he reasoned, Laura made him complete in a way neither Caroline nor Anne ever had; he looked for his missing piece, now, spotted her trying to make her way across the room, and exited before she could get to the hatch and see him there. Plans, he had; he mentally rubbed his hands together, and lurked in wait.   
  
Laura had finally worked her way to the edge of the crowd, and looked around at the seething, lurching,  _noisy_  group with a dismayed fondness. Cally was draped, unconscious, over her husband’s lap; he was at least two and a half sheets to the wind, and attempting to lead his subordinates in a rousing chorus of some Aquarian drinking song. It clashed quite horribly with the dance music blaring over the speakers. Anders had lured Starbuck into a corner they probably thought was dark enough, behind a rack of tools; it wasn’t dark enough, and there was just enough happening for Laura to wish she hadn’t spotted them. There were similar happenings in similar corners, and she thought it was probably time for the President to make her graceful and discreet departure. She knew they would all regret it in the morning, but it was probably something they all needed. And of course, about nine months from now, in the time-honored way of such things, there would be a rash of updates to her white board.   
  
She wondered how much she, herself, might regret things in the morning; she felt the effects of the crew’s liquor as a slight tingling in her lips, a feeling of floating as she walked, and a sense of increasing tunnel vision. She looked around, but did not see the Admiral, and decided with a wry smile that she would walk herself home.   
  
She didn’t get the chance. He was waiting just outside the hatch to the corridor that lead to senior officers’ quarters, and took her arm with a gallantry completely at odds with the gleam in his eye. They sidestepped the occasional liplocked, oblivious couple, and proceeded down the walk, but took an unexpected detour down a side corridor before they were halfway back to the cabin.   
  
“Where’s this?” she asked, looking at the hatches lining the narrower hall.  
  
He answered with a seemingly unrelated question. “Have I mentioned I have a master key that opens every hatch on the ship?”   
  
“Admiral’s prerogative?”  
  
“Something like that…” He was unlocking the hatch nearest them, even as he glanced either direction, making sure the coast was clear.   
  
“Bill… this is a broom closet,” she remarked, once he had ushered her inside.  
  
“It’s an equipment locker,” he corrected, backing her up against the wall with a smile of wicked intent.   
  
“You have  _got_  to be kidding.”  
  
He took her hands in his, only to sweep them up over her head and pin them there while he kissed her, pressed the length of his body against her, in a way that made it clear he was not, in fact, kidding. When he shifted his grip, so he could hold her wrists with one hand and free the other hand for groping, she stopped making even a token effort to resist.  _Broom closet. Who knew? What the hell did Galen put in that still, anyway?_  Because, in truth, she was just as eager as he was. Which he discovered, with a groan of anticipation, when he ran his hand peremptorily up her leg from her knee, to cup her through the thin fabric of her underwear. Found dampness, heat, waiting for him there, along with a sigh of delight.   
  
It was not a time for foreplay, or the removal of clothes. Rather, it was a time for a minimum of shoving things aside, for speed and fervor, and feeling the almost-intrusion of fabric along the edges of things. His mouth was greedy against hers, lips taking, tongue plundering; it would have been one-sided, had she been participating less thoroughly. As it was, she pushed back as far as she could with her limited range of motion, and tried to pull him closer by hooking one leg around his thigh.   
  
 _Impressive guy_. Bill worked well with only one hand; he managed to get his own fly unzipped, extract himself with rather more care than he demonstrated elsewhere, skim her underwear clean off, get her skirt out of the way, while still securing her hands as firmly to that one spot as if they were shackled there. His moustache tickled her ear when he worried her neck, a counterpoint to the sharp feel of teeth, and she arched into his mouth although she knew he was leaving his mark. He branded the delicate skin of her throat, even as he pulled her leg up again and entered her with a single, undisciplined thrust.   
  
They were both more than a little drunk, and he took her roughly; tomorrow, she would be all too keenly aware of it. Tonight, however, she reveled in it, gloried at the fact that he was so clearly out of control, and that she was the cause. He could immobilize her if he liked, it didn’t make him any more in charge of things. Despite herself, she smiled broadly, and he paused long enough to return her smile ( _Look at us, acting like idiots…_ ) before resuming his aggressive rhythm. He put his free hand to good use between them, letting his thumb ride against her flushed clit with each stroke. He could tell when she was close, could feel her tensing around his cock, hear her starting to catch her breath sweetly each time he buried himself inside her, and so he knew the time was perfect to implement the next phase of his plan.   
  
He stopped.   
  
It took all the control he had, control he didn’t even know he had, to do it. Her eyes blinked open, meeting his in bleary confusion.   
  
And once he had her full attention, he said, “Marry me.”  
  
It took a moment for this to register; his thumb was still pressed against her, and her unspent passion brought her trembling against it with each gasp of breath. “ _What?_  Bill, for gods’ sake…"  
  
“Don’t think about it, just say you will.” He accentuated his words with a single, smooth motion of his hips away and back again, as if she needed reminding.  
  
“You are  _such_  a son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered, then threw her head back, bit her lip, struggled to clear her mind.   
  
“I know,” he replied with a straight face. “It’s part of my charm.  _Don’t think_. Marry me.”  
  
“ _Bill…_ ”  
  
He kissed her, very lightly. “Say yes.”  
  
Then he moved inside her again, pushing even deeper, the friction almost too much for her to bear. She strained against him, trying in vain to find leverage. She still had a foot on the ground, they were nearly the same height, but he had rendered her effectively motionless.  _How is he standing this?_  In the dim light of the emergency bulb, she could see his jaw clenched, was suddenly aware that the trembling she felt was not solely hers, and realized that he really wasn’t standing it very well at all.   
  
“Yes,” she said, without thinking, and raised her lips to his.   
  
They would regret the position in the morning, rising sore and dry-mouthed, his knees aching, her shoulder blades and back faintly bruised. And the hickey, which would take some covering or explaining or both. But they would not regret the decision.   
  
He surged into her again and again, and with all his former urgency; his control was gone, it was a race, but he knew she was as close as he was. She came first, clutching at him needily with every part of her, and the shock of her orgasm brought his in response, a moment sooner than he expected; he shot himself into her with a ragged, startled cry, loosing her hands and wrapping his arms around her as he finally, irrevocably, lost control of the situation.   
  
They would have liked to stay there, joined at the hip indefinitely. Gravity, unfortunately, had other plans. It pulled them apart despite their weakly chuckling efforts, and Bill showed the merit of his choice in locations by instantly reaching into the nearest cabinet and withdrawing a clean rag. After availing herself of it, Laura tossed it into the recycler with a moue of distaste. Not for the stuff itself, which she found unobjectionable, but for the fact that she knew there was more  _somewhere_ ; it was never possible to get it all off without showering, and even then…   
  
“I’m keeping my name,” she remarked, straightening her clothes briskly before hauling open the hatch and checking the corridor for bystanders. “The coast is clear.”  
  
“Can I call you Mrs. Adama in private?”   
  
She looked over her shoulder with a smirk, as she stepped out of the hatch. “No, but you can call me  _President_  Adama in private.” And she started down the walk without him, knowing he would catch up once he had locked the broom closet again. She didn’t walk as quickly as she might have, of course; he joined her before she reached the junction with the main corridor. When he offered his arm, she took it with a polite smile, and they made their way home together, just two middle-aged leaders of the human race enjoying a respectable, evening constitutional.


	9. Jovial

Jupiter, not wanting man’s life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason—you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions.   
  
 _–Erasmus_  
  


* * *

  
  
They had actually forgotten just how early that next morning’s meeting with the senior staff was set. Fortunately, the galley on the Galactica was already back up to speed; as was their standing order, they arrived promptly at 06:45 with coffee, juice, and danish.* The polite rap on the hatch woke Laura, who had just enough presence of mind to yank on sweatpants and a t-shirt and close the hatch to the bunk room part way, before opening the main hatch to accept their offering.   
  
Lee, gods damn him, showed up early. And chipper. With agendas for the meeting in hand. It was wholly insupportable. Laura poured him a cup of coffee with unusually ill grace before serving herself, and then sat back on the couch a bit truculently, awaiting the fallout. Which never came. Lee seemed completely unsurprised to find her here, in his father’s quarters, in his father’s  _clothes_ , for frak’s sake (the t-shirt, at least), with his father still asleep in what had clearly been their shared bed.  _Rack. Whatever._  
  
“Old Man still asleep?” he asked idly, scanning his agenda and making a note.   
  
From the direction of the bunk came a grumbling, as of a sleepy bear emerging from hibernation. Followed shortly by a more plaintive call: “Laura? Hey, where the frak are my glasses? These are yours, I can’t see a damned thing…”  
  
“Um…” With an attempt at a smile, that turned horribly wrong as the bizarreness of the situation settled in, Laura rose, snatched Bill’s glasses from the desk where he’d left them, and slipped into the next room to remind him about the meeting. Lee heard a few more select curses, then his father emerged, clad only in shorts and tanks, heading straight for the coffee.   
  
“Son,” he acknowledged with a nod, taking a bracing sip as he walked straight back into the bunk room, closing the hatch behind him.  
  
“Morning, Dad,” Lee replied absently, now absorbed in reading a report.   
  
Maya was next to arrive, looking puzzled to see Lee sitting alone. At her quizzical expression, he just rolled his eyes in the direction of the next room. She gave a little ‘ah’ of understanding, poured herself a glass of juice, accepted a copy of the agenda, and joined him on the couch. At that moment, Laura appeared once more, wearing the suit she had had on for the previous evening’s events. Not so abnormal an occurrence, of course, seeing the President wear the same suit two days running. But when she saw Maya next to Lee, she froze, a faint blush coloring her traitorously fair cheeks before she caught herself and recovered her poise.   
  
Maya, for her part, merely glanced up at her employer, smiled and said, “Good morning,” and calmly resumed reading through the agenda.   
  
“Good morning.”  _Is nobody shocked by anything anymore?_  
  
Then, realizing she had forgotten her glasses, Laura turned around to retrieve them from the bedside table, re-emerging just as Karl Agathon arrived with Saul Tigh. Saul, not yet back in uniform, the white bandage still shocking against his skin, rather surprisingly  _not_  hung over. He was just in time to see her stop, peel the glasses from her face with a look of disgust, and go back into the bunk room.   
  
“Bill, these are yours now, where did you leave  _mine_?”   
  
Bill, uniformed in record time, apologized as he passed her, trading glasses with a sheepish smile. “Commander,” he now greeted Lee.   
  
“Morning, Admiral.”  
  
“Maya, Major, Colonel Tigh… Saul, are you all right?”   
  
Evidently, Laura realized as she rejoined the group, Saul was now the one person on Galactica who had  _not_  known she was effectively living with the Admiral, and who  _could_  still be shocked by things. They were not, however, things he could discuss in a senior staff meeting with the Admiral of the Fleet and the President of the Twelve Colonies present… no matter what they were evidently doing in their free time. Laura had no idea why, but she felt strangely reassured by Saul’s discomfiture. She had actually felt some amused anticipation at what Lee’s reaction to the arrangement might be, and felt deprived when he had no reaction at all. Beaten to the punchline again, it seemed, with her own aide, who had probably told Felix Gaeta, which meant everyone in the fleet probably knew by now. With the obvious exception, it seemed, of Galactica’s executive officer. Granted, he had only just rejoined the ship after his tenure on New Caprica; presumably, he would catch up with the rest of the interim’s changes in due time.   
  
Tigh closed his mouth, which he realized had been slightly agape, and gave his old friend and commanding officer a weak nod, tempered with a certain wide-eyed admiration. “Yes, sir, I’m fine.”  
  
And so he would be. In due time.   
  
It was, however, a stunningly unproductive meeting as far as he was concerned.  
  


* * * * *

  
  
Laura preferred “Lagoon Nebula” to the designation “Astral Body M8.” More romantic, and reminiscent of geography, of landforms, of bodies of water. All things she missed with a heartbreaking homesickness for grounded life; all things she tried not to think about. So she had made a conscious effort to learn more about the ocean of stars in which they now traveled.   
  
She was saddened to learn, along with the others, that they would not actually be traveling as far as the nebula itself; more sophisticated triangulation than Lee’s snap estimate had indicated that Earth, if it existed, lay somewhere between the nebula and the twelve colonies, somewhere along their current rough course. Still, it was thrilling enough to think of traveling further towards the heart of the galaxy, tracing their ancient course back through the stars to…   
  
Home? That remained to be seen, actually. But it was as good a destination as any. It was not, after all, the actual destination that mattered, but the idea of having one, the fiction that gave their journey meaning. In arrival, there were too many unknowns, too many variables for which they could never solve in advance; but traveling, they had started to get good at. Some things were not about product, but about process, and she marveled that she had come so far in her life before realizing this applied to relationships, too. Not a series of satisfying or unsatisfying products, but a continuous process, in which you willingly let a tiny piece of yourself come unraveled and weave itself intimately into the threads of another person’s life. Bill’s life. And by extension, Lee’s life, Dee’s, and the shockingly gorgeous little boy named Joseph their now-broken union had produced. Kara’s life, which still seemed to hover on the brink of disaster; Samuel Anders had recanted his recovery a few weeks after the final mission to New Caprica, had finally succumbed to the nameless bacteria that resumed their attack on his weakened body with savage swiftness. Laura suspected Lee would move in soon, and wondered with Bill if that were really best for Kara. Selfishly, though, she reasoned that Kara was still at a prime age for childbearing. And Lee was a proven stud horse. Laura sometimes frightened herself with her own heartless practicality; then she would look at the dry-erase board, would consider her bottom line, and knew that there was nothing heartless about it.   
  
Maya and Felix’s life, into which Bill was now increasingly woven. The leaders of the human race were the closest thing to grandparents little Isis had, and as such, had become the default babysitters enabling the would-be couple to spend time seeking the thing Galactica always lacked: privacy. Isis had taken a shine to the Admiral, once she had overcome her shyness; and Bill, for his part, was eventually unable to resist the charms of the sloe-eyed imp. Even if she did turn out to be, as he had once long ago asserted to Laura – an assertion he had been made to regret again and  _again_  and again – the viper they were nurturing in their bosom.   
  
Laura had fixed him with her gaze, the one that was too calm, the one where her upper lip looked tense, and her eyes sparkled with icy glints he could practically  _feel_ , and remarked that if anyone knew how to airlock a Cylon, she was that person, and that Isis was  _not_  a candidate for this procedure. Not now, not ever.  
  
“And if  _you_  ever want to have anything to do with this particular bosom again, Bill, you’d do well to rethink your position on this subject, because it is  _not_  negotiable.”   
  
She had exited his cabin with undeniable style, knowing a great exit line when she delivered one. And, because he was no fool, Bill had suggested that they watch little Isis that very night, giving Felix and Maya a chance to eat dinner together alone.   
  
But he had not gotten off that easily; she still goaded him about it occasionally, until the night she had returned late from a ration meeting with the fleet’s representatives, only to find Bill asleep on the couch, Isis sprawled out on his chest, a forgotten book wedged beside their softly snoring forms.   
  
“A Pictorial History of Warcraft?” Laura questioned with a bemused smile once she had handed the child off to Maya and awakened her sleeping husband.   
  
“It was the only thing with pictures,” he explained. “She knows all the Viper versions now. And stem and stern. She still doesn’t get port and starboard, but she can say ‘turbothrust engine.’ Sort of.”  
  
She stared at him for a few seconds, started to say something, but stopped and instead just said, “I love you.”  
  
“Well… I love you, too.”  
  
Which of course, in the end, was all that really mattered, anyway.   
  
  
  
 _Fin_  
  
  


* * *

  
* I call the sweet rolls “danish,” here, in the style and manner of the inimitable, late Douglas Adams, who pointed out that on every inhabited planet, in every solar system, there existed some sort of beverage that went by a name that sounded exactly like “Gin and Tonics.” Jynnan tonnyx, gee-n’n’t’n-ix, jinond-o-nicks, and so on. And these were all invented and named before their respective worlds ever came into contact with other worlds. Perhaps the same is true of the humble danish. Imagine that the danish on Galactica are much the same as what we might call danish here on this planet, in this day and age. Except probably octagonal. I offer this explanation purely in the spirit of homage, because, you know,  _Douglas Adams_.


End file.
